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SAN  DIEGO 


MAKERS    OF    MAN 


Frontispiece. 


MAKERS    OF    MAN 


A  STUDY  OF  HUMAN  INITIATIVE 


BY 


CHARLES  J.  IWHITBY,  M.D.(CANTAB.) 

\S   AUTHOR  OF 
"THE  LOGIC  OF  HUMAN  CHARACTER"  "THE  WISDOM  OF  PLOTINUS'' 

ETC.    ETC. 


WITH    FORTY-SEVEN    HALF-TONE   AND   OTHER    PLATES 


NEW    YORK 

REBMAN     COMPANY 
1123    BROADWAY 


PREFACE 

IN  this  work  I  have  essayed  the  experiment  of  dealing  with  the 
lives  of  great  men  as  problems  capable,  through  and  through,  of 
psychological  treatment  and  elucidation.  Even  their  physical 
organisms  are,  from  this  point  of  view,  to  be  regarded  not  as 
mere  animated  "  matter,"  but  each  one  as  organised  experience, 
a  psychosis,  the  sub-conscious  and  super-conscious  factors  of 
which  all  play  their  part  in  contributing  to  the  feeling-tone, 
modifying  the  opinions,  or  determining  the  motives  of  conduct. 
Partly  because  the  lives  of  great  men  show  in  higher  degree  than 
those  of  the  rank  and  file  that  unity  of  manifestation  which  we 
expect  from  the  exfoliation  of  a  self-determining  spontaneity, 
partly,  too,  in  indulgence  of  an  epic  taste  for  profound  issues  and 
a  comprehensive  survey,  I  have  chosen  for  the  subjects  of  my 
experiment  the  lives  of  forty  world-famous  individuals.  I  think 
I  may  claim  to  have  avoided  the  danger  of  burying  the  human 
interest  of  my  problem  under  a  debris  of  dry-as-dust  technical- 
ities. On  the  other  hand,  I  have  made  no  concessions  to  those 
whose  ideal  of  a  scientific  or  philosophical  treatise  would  seem 
to  be  one  written  in  words  of  not  more  than  two  syllables,  making 
no  sort  of  demand  on  the  culture  or  intelligence  of  its  readers. 
Nor  am  I  greatly  concerned  for  the  approval  or  censure  of  those 
who  affect  to  regard  the  lives  of  great  men,  apart  from  their 
official  achievements,  as  a  matter  for  gingerly  treatment — 
not  to  say  hypocritical  Bowdlerisation.  The  great  man  has, 


viii  PREFACE 

properly  speaking,  no  private  life  :  all  his  thoughts,  words, 
actions,  are,  in  their  degree,  factors  of  his  power  and  influence, 
and,  as  such,  worthy  of  respectful  study.  If  we  sometimes  find 
them  shocking,  we  shall  then,  oftener  than  not,  find  them 
shedding  floods  of  light  upon  otherwise  impenetrable  obscurities 
in  the  inner  and  outer  life  of  their  subjects.1  It  is  time  that 
biography  were  taken  seriously  as  a  department  of  Science,  that 
biographers  began  to  realise  their  responsibilities  as  purveyors  of 
the  raw  material  of  inductive  psychology.  To  turn  out  a 
"  readable  "  book  upon  the  life-history  of  a  famous  poet  or 
statesman — that  is  mere  child's  play,  of  course.  But  if  no  more 
be  accomplished,  the  subject  has  been  exploited,  not  honourably 
dealt  with ;  and  the  result  will  be  a  jerry-built  affair,  whose 
decorative  front  is  a  poor  apology  for  the  hidden  vices  of  its 
construction.  Underlying  the  psychological  argument,  the 
discriminating  reader  will  discern  in  my  book  the  ground-motif 
of  a  deeper  curiosity,  pervading  and  actuating  all.  Psychology 
is  the  Jacob's  ladder  by  which  the  modern  mind  hopes  to  reach 
the  heaven  of  Philosophy  :  in  its  domain  we  are  faced  at  every 
turn  by  the  ultimate  questions — one  would  be  more  or  less  than 
human  if  one  were  never  tempted  to  guess  at  an  answer,  here 
and  there.  In  my  last  chapter  I  have  given  scientific  reticence 
a  holiday,  and  speculative  imagination  the  licence  it  may,  on 
occasion,  justly  demand.  That  demonstration  of  the  predomin- 
ance of  a  super-mechanical,  super-physiological  spontaneity  in 
the  determination  of  human  careers,  which  I  take  to  be  the 
main  result  of  my  inquiry,  is  in  no  way  affected  by  the  accept- 
ance or  denial  of  the  speculative  position  tentatively  assumed 
in  the  said  chapter,  or,  incidentally,  in  other  parts  of  my  book. 

1  And  of  other  men,  too,  almost  needless  to  add. 


PREFACE  ix 

Of  course,  in  dealing  with  so  great  a  number  of  lives  it  has 
been  impossible  to  give  equal  attention  to  each.  On  the  other 
hand,  without  a  sufficient  number  of  examples,  no  general 
conclusions  could  safely  have  been  attained.  What  is,  in  some 
cases,  lacking  in  the  way  of  precise  knowledge  of  the  details  of 
personal  conduct  and  private  life,  is  more  than  compensated  by 
the  importance  of  recorded  public  achievements ;  while  the 
fuller  information  available  in  the  case  of  the  more  modern 
exemplars  has  enabled  me  to  dispense  with  the  lack  of  it,  without 
serious  detriment,  in  other  cases.  Quotations  have  in  many 
instances  been  indicated  by  footnotes  ;  or,  if  only  by  the  use  of 
inverted  commas,  can  readily  be  identified  by  reference  to  the 
list  of  authorities  at  the  end  of  the  book. 

In  regard  to  my  choice  of  examples,  my  chief  aim  has  been 
the  exclusion  of  second-rate  personalities.  Considerations  of 
expediency  have,  even  here,  inevitably  made  themselves  felt : 
it  would,  for  instance,  have  been  useless  to  include  Shakespeare, 
of  whose  private  life  practically  nothing  is  known.1  Again, 
among  the  moderns,  men  like  Ibsen,  Wagner,  Whitman,  and 
Nietzsche,  whose  influence  is  as  yet  quite  indeterminate,  is, 
as  it  were,  in  a  yeasty,  unfermented  phase,  could  only  have 
proved  a  source  of  embarrassment  and  confusion;  and,  in  a 
subject  necessarily  rife  with  so  many  intrinsic  difficulties,  the  ad- 
mission of  irrelevant  controversies  was  obviously  to  be  avoided. 
Some  readers  may  sympathise  with  my  confession,  that  I  had 
grave  doubts  as  to  the  claim  of  Walter  Scott  to  the  high  com- 
pany among  whom  I  have  placed  him,  in  the  class  to  which  he 
belongs.  Byron  or  Shelley  would  in  some  ways  have  seemed 
to  me  worthier  of  such  a  place.  But  Lockhart's  magnificent 

1  For  much  the  same  reason  I  rejected  Columbus  in  favour  of  Drake. 


x  PREFACE 

biography  was  a  document  whose  temptation  proved  irresist- 
ible ;  and,  upon  the  whole,  I  am  satisfied  that  my  decision  was, 
even  upon  the  grounds  of  his  own  personal  claims,  for  the  best. 
After  all,  Scott  was,  pre-eminently,  a  man  of  the  centre  (too 
much  so,  or  too  stolidly  so,  if  the  truth  must  be  told) ;  his  fame 
to-day  is  more  cosmopolitan  than  that  of  any  of  his  contem- 
poraries ;  he  was  also  a  lyric  poet,  who  produced  several 
absolutely  flawless  gems  of  song.  How  much,  too,  of  our  modern 
poetry  and  fiction  is  in  greater  or  less  degree  derivative  from 
Scott.  Yes,  I  think  I  was  right  in  disregarding  my  tempera- 
mental scruples  :  it  would  have  been  an  error  to  have  left  Scott 
out  of  my  Pantheon. 

C.  J.  WHITBY. 
October  1910. 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

DEDICATION     ........        v 

PREFACE          ........      vii 

CHAP. 

I.  INTRODUCTORY  ......        1 

The  Body  as  Organised  Experience — The  Unity  of 
Consciousness — Instinct — Heredity — Acquired  Quali- 
ties— Theories  of  the  Ego. 

II.  CLASSIFICATION  .  .  .  .  .  .20 

The  Man  of  Action — The  Artist — The  Philosopher  and  the 
Scientific  Discoverer — The  Ethico-Religious  Pioneer — 
Subsidiary  and  Mixed  Types — Examples  and  Quali- 
fications. 

III.  FAMILY   HISTORY,   PARENTAGE,   CONSTITUTION        .  .      46 

Size  of  Paternal  and  Maternal  Family — Place  in  Family 
— Longevity — Relation  of  Paternal  and  Maternal 
Factors — Examples — Maternal  Insanity — Tuberculosis, 
etc. — Sterility  of  Genius — Summary. 

IV.  PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS      .  .  .  .  .64 

Men  of  Action — Artists,  Poets,  and  Composers. 

V.  PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS — Continued          .  .  .83 

Intellectuals  —  Their  Mediocre  Physique  —  Ethico- 
Religious  Group — Physiognomy  of  Jesus — Examples 
— Summary. 

VI.  NATURAL  VOCATION      ......     101 

Twins — Versatility  and  Adaptability — Forms  of  Natural 
Vocation  :  I.  and  II.  Examples. 

VII.  NATURAL  VOCATION — Continued          .  .  .  .132 

Forms  of  Natural  Vocation :  III.  and  IV.  Examples — 
Recapitulation. 


xii  CONTENTS 

CI1AP.  PACK 

VIII.  THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE  .  .  .     159 

Significance  of  Purpose — I.  Men  of  Action — Negative 
and  Positive  Phases  of  Purpose — II.  ^Esthetic  Types. 

IX.  THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE — Continued     .  .    209 

III.  Intellectual  Type— IV.  Ethico-Religious  Type— 
The  Higher  Criticism — V.  Recapitulation. 

X.  POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE       .  .  .  .  .291 

I.  Danger  and  Solitude. 

XI.  POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE — Continued  .  .  .     316 

IT.  Woman  —  Classification  of  Sexual  Types  —  Am- 
biguities— Need  of  Detachment — Woman  in  relation 
to  Man's  Ideals — Sexual  Versatility  of  Genius — 
Examples — "  The  Higher  Monogamy." 

XII.  LIMITATION  AND  CRIME          .  .  .  .  .351 

Definition  of  Terms — Universality  of  Crime — Examples 
— "  The  Guilt  of  Innocency." 

XIII.  INDIVIDUALITY  :   ITS  NATURE  AND  POWER    .  .  .    379 

Mechanism  versus  Psychism — "  Back  to  Leibnitz  " — 
Heredity  —  Eugenics  —  A  Parable  —  Soul  and  Spirit 
— Fechner's  Hypothesis,  "Immortality" — The  Social 
Factor — Valedictory  Survey. 

AUTHORITIES    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .411 

INDEX  .  415 


LIST    OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

C/ESAR  .....    Frontispiece 

&ESAR  .  .  .  Facing  p.  66 

CHARLEMAGNE  ....  32 

WILLIAM  THE  SILENT  .  .  .  .  .        „        52 

SIR  FRANCIS  DRAKE  ....  70 

CARDINAL  RICHELIEU  .  .  .  .  .        ,,         72 

OLIVER  CROMWELL     .....  74 

FREDERICK  THE  GREAT          ....  104 

LORD  NELSON  .  .  .  .  .  .        »»       108 

NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE,  LIEUTENANT  D'ARTILLERIE  .        „       110 

NAPOLEON       ......  182 

NAPOLEON       .....  300 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN     .....  112 

DANTE  ,118 

DANTE  ,,398 

LEONARDO  DA  VINCI  .  .  .  .  .        „       154 

TITIAN  ,,194 

CERVANTES      •••....„       196 

MOZART  ,,198 

MOZART  ••.....„       302 

GOETHE  .....  200 

GOETHE  .....  340 

BEETHOVEN     ........       202 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT    .......       204 

TURNER  ......  206 


xiv  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT  ......  Facing  p.  208 

BACON             210 

GALILEO          ........  212 

HABVEY          ........  214 

DESCARTES      ........  218 

SPINOZA           .            .            .            .            .            .  220 

SIR  ISAAC  NEWTON    .......  224 

LEIBNITZ         ........  228 

KANT ,,230 

HEGEL             .            .            .            .            .            .  234 

CHARLES  DARWIN       .......  236 

CHRIST  AND  THE  TRIBUTE  MONEY   .            .            .                    ,,  92 

HEAD  OF  CHRIST        .......  242 

ST.  PAUL         .            .            .            .            .            .                    „  248 

MARCUS  AURELIUS     .            .            .            .            .                    ,,  250 

ST.  AUGUSTINE           .            .            .            .            .                    ,,  254 

ST.  GREGORY  THE  GREAT      .           .           .           .                   „  312 

MAHOMET        ........  314 

ST.  FRANCIS  D'Assisi             .            .            .            .                    „  316 

MARTIN  LUTHER         .......  376 

R.  W.  EMERSON         .            .            .            .            .                    „  406 

ERNEST  RENAN          .......  408 

N.B. — The  strict  order  of  sequence  lias  been  departed  from  in  the  above 
list,  portraits  of  the  same  individual  being  grouped  together  for 
convenience  of  reference. 


MAKERS     OF    MAN 


INTRODUCTORY 

The  body  as  organised  experience — The  unity  of  consciousness — Instinct — 
Heredity — Acquired  qualities — Theories  of  the  Ego. 

I  DO  not  propose  here  to  set  forth  in  explicit  detail  my 
personal  view  as  to  the  nature  of  human  individuality.  To  do 
so  would  be  to  prejudice  in  advance  the  prudent  reader  against 
my  claim  to  be  regarded  as  a  trustworthy  guide  through  this 
region  of  mystery,  so  thickly  beset  with  pitfalls  for  unwary 
feet.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  will  I  dissemble  the  fact  that  such 
a  personal  view,  the  product  of  long  meditation  and  no  little 
research,  I  do  indeed  possess,  and  purpose  in  due  course  to 
unfold  in  these  pages.  But  it  seems  best  in  every  way  that  this 
view  of  mine  should  so  far  as  possible  be  objectively  presented, 
that  is,  should  speak  mainly  not  in  its  own  person,  but  through 
the  lips  of  accredited  facts.  So  far  as  these  facts  appear  to 
establish  its  claim  to  existence,  it  will  inevitably  command  the 
assent  of  impartial  readers.  So  far  as  it  rests  on  unverified  or 
perhaps  unverifiable  speculation,  it  could  of  course  expect  but 
a  doubtful  or  grudging  welcome,  even  where  it  escaped  the  rebuff 
of  downright  hostility.  Later,  perhaps,  when  our  survey  of 
the  field  of  research  has  carried  us  well  into  the  heart  of  the 
matter,  I  may  find  it  necessary  to  be  more  outspoken.  A 
subject  so  profound  and  so  significant  will  not  yield  up  its  secret 
at  the  behest  of  a  timid  or  half-hearted  inquirer.  Nor  will  it 
fail  to  confound  the  presumption  born  of  an  inadequate  sense 
of  the  difficulties  of  the  inquiry.  There  is  need  of  audacity, 
I 


2  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and  there  is  need  of  caution  :  it  would  be  hard  to  say  which  is 
the  more  indispensable  to  success  in  an  investigation  so  arduous 
yet  so  alluring. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  psychology,  a  new-born  infant 
may  be  regarded  as  a  specific  embodiment  of  the  organised 
experience  of  the  race.  Nay  more  ;  it  is  a  specific  embodiment 
of  all  organised  experience  whatsoever  that  enters  into  the  direct 
line  of  its  human  and  pre-human  ancestry.  And  if  we  admit, 
as  many  are  prepared  in  these  days  to  admit,  that  there  may 
be  such  a  thing  as  a  psychology  of  the  inorganic,  that  too  will 
be  an  element  underlying  the  most  primitive  vital  traits.  On 
the  physical  side,  inorganic  nature  is  represented  in  the  human 
body  by  the  stratified  lime-salts  deposited  in  the  bones,  and 
by  the  fact  that  these  bones,  once  growth  has  been  completed, 
are  in  a  very  limited  sense  living  as  we  understand  the  word. 
Much  the  same  could  be  said  as  to  the  teeth,  tendons,  fibrous 
and  elastic  tissue,  etc.  So,  on  the  pyschological  side,  it  seems 
hardly  too  fanciful  to  assert  that  man  inherits  from  the  inorganic 
sphere  some  deep-seated  elemental  qualities  of  rock-like  strength 
and  tenacity,  or  ground-tones  of  affective  rhythm  perpetuating 
the  oceanic  ebb  and  flow.  All  this,  at  least,  has  demonstrably 
gone  to  his  making,  and  every  cause  must  in  some  degree  pass 
over  into  its  effect.  To  think  of  the  human  body  as  organised 
racial  and  sub -racial  experience,  is  not  necessarily  to  imply  the 
inheritance  of  acquired  characteristics.  An  inborn  variation 
qua  psychic  potentiality  is  not  less  credible  than  qua  structural 
new  departure.  The  subject  of  such  a  variation  starts  life  with 
a  new  capacity  or  the  germ  of  one,  and  the  inheritance  as  well 
as  the  development  of  this  are  elements  of  its  experience.  The 
inheritance  or  non-inheritance  of  acquired  characters  is  a 
question  of  fact.  Still  it  is  true  that  from  the  psychological  side 
the  a  priori  difficulties  of  the  extreme  view  represented  by 
Weismann  and  Reid  are  more  obvious  than  from  the  physio- 
logical. What  presents  itself  on  the  physical  side  as  a  newly- 
perfected  neuro-muscular  system,  is  on  the  psychical  side  a 
newly-established  habit.  Supposing  such  a  habit  to  be  of 
advantage  to  its  possessor,  and  so  to  escape  the  eliminative 
effect  of  natural  selection,  it  seems  but  reasonable  to  anticipate 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

that  its  perpetuation  will  be  in  some  way  positively  provided 
for.1  If  not  inherited  in  its  fulness,  there  may  be  at  least  for 
succeeding  generations  a  cumulative  facility  in  the  establishment 
of  such  a  habit.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  there  is  a  struggle 
for  existence  within  the  sphere  of  the  individual  consciousness. 
Efforts  resulting  in  successful  activity  tend  by  this  law  of 
Hedonic  Selection  to  be  repeated  and  to  perpetuate  themselves, 
for  the  individual  at  least,  in  the  form  of  habits.  Unsuccessful 
efforts,  on  the  contrary,  tend  to  be  superseded  and  to  disappear. 
Has  this  fact  no  significance  for  those  who  deny  the  inheritance 
of  acquired  characters  ? 

The  starting-point  of  human  evolution  may,  according  to 
Haeckel,  be  found  in  the  lowest  form  of  infusorian — a  practically 
homogeneous  anucleated  monocellular  protist.  There  may 
well  be  yet  lower  rungs  in  the  ladder,  but  if  so,  they  await 
identification.  It  is  the  first  step  that  counts  ;  we  will  therefore 
try  for  a  moment  to  formulate  a  conception  of  the  psychology  of 
such  a  monocellular  unit.  It  has  presumably  consciousness  of 
some  kind  or  degree,  and  that  consciousness  will  bear  to  that 
of  a  human  individual  a  relation  analogous  to  the  structural 
relation  of  the  simple  cell-body  to  a  complex  human  organism. 
There  is  in  the  cell-body  of  the  protozoon  no  appreciable 
structural  differentiation,  and  without  that  there  can  be  no 
division  of  labour.  Every  part  of  the  cell  is  a  potential  mouth, 
stomach,  intestine,  organ  of  prehension,  excretion,  or  locomotion. 
Any  part  indifferently  will  respond  in  one  or  other  of  these 
modes  to  appropriate  stimulus.  Similarly,  the  psychology  of 
such  a  cell  will  be  simple,  primitive,  undifferentiated.  It  will 
comprise  the  raw  material  of  all  higher  forms  of  soul-life,  of 
what  ages  later  will  manifest  itself  as  intellect,  and  also  of  what 
will  manifest  itself  as  will.  In  other  words,  the  presentative 
and  the  affective  elements  of  mind  will  co-exist  in  their  primitive 
integral  unity.  The  protozoon  will  have  a  direct  intuition  of 
its  own  state,  and  of  that  which  concerns  it  in  its  immediate 
surroundings,  a  direct  impulse  to  react  in  such  or  such  a  way  to 
a  given  stimulus.  Physiologists  usually  define  the  presentative 

1  Hence  the  importance  of  Haeckel's  theory  of  "  Unconscious  Memory  " 
as  a  factor  in  evolution. 


4  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

reactions  of  these  anucleated  protozoa  as  "  Sensations,"  and 
limit  their  consciousness  to  these.  But  sensation  is  not  the  raw 
material  of  consciousness  in  general ;  it  is  rather  an  abstraction 
from  the  unity  of  human  perception.  One  might  as  well  talk 
of  the  protist  as  having  ideas  !  It  has  the  unitary  potentiality 
of  every  form  of  soul-life,  just  as  it  has  the  unitary  potentiality 
of  every  specific  bodily  function.  The  unity  of  primitive  mind 
comprehends  the  germ  of  both  mil  and  idea  ;  that  is  the  main 
lesson  we  learn  from  the  contemplation  of  our  monocellular 
forebear. 

The  next  thing  to  be  noted  is  the  ectodermic  origin  of  the 
nervous  system,  a  point  of  which  the  psychological  import  has 
hitherto  been  strangely  ignored.  Solipsists  and  rationalists  are 
prone  to  lay  undue  stress  on  the  insulation  of  the  human  cere- 
brum, its  apparent  dependency  on  the  peripheral  nerves  for 
knowledge  of  the  "  external  world."  They  must  surely  be 
aware  that,  phylogenetically,  the  entire  nervous  system,  in- 
cluding the  brain,  is  an  external  organ,  the  analogue  of  the  epi- 
thelium of  a  gastraead  (so  far  as  that  functions  as  a  sense-organ), 
the  analogue  of  the  peripheral  portion  of  the  protoplasm  of  an 
anucleated  infusorian.  Haeckel  has  pointed  out  the  importance 
of  the  conception  of  "  unconscious  memory  "  from  a  develop- 
mental point  of  view.  May  we  not  regard  the  external  reference 
of  perception  as  an  objective  interpretation  of  one  such  un- 
conscious memory — that,  namely,  of  direct  intuition,  on  the 
part  of  protozoic  and  metazoic  ancestors,  of  a  contiguous 
external  medium  ? 

Before  we  take  leave  of  our  protozoon,  there  is  one  other 
element  of  its  inferred  psychology,  to  the  speculative  significance 
of  which  I  must  call  attention.  The  continuity  and  homogeneity 
of  its  structure — I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  anucleated  prdtist — 
inevitably  suggest  a  like  simplicity  of  psychic  function.  The 
consciousness  or  quasi-consciousness  of  the  cell  must  be  a 
totality,  what  happens  in  one  part  will  be  intuited,  and  reacted 
to,  locally  or  generally,  not  by  that  part  only,  but  by  the  cell 
as  a  whole.  That  is  to  say,  the  cell  as  a  whole  will  have  an 
intuition  of  local  stimulus,  and  the  cell  as  a  whole  will  determine 
the  local  or  general  reaction.  The  generalisation  of  a  given 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

intuition  may  not  be  strictly  instantaneous  ;  it  may  be  the 
correlative  of  a  wave-like  impulse  traversing  the  cell-substance  ; 
but  it  is  obviously  bound  to  occur.    This  view  is  confirmed  by 
the  fact  that  the  next  step  in  evolution  shows  us  the  protozoon 
in  possession  of  a  nucleus.    Recent  cytology  strongly  tends  to 
regard  the  nucleus  as  a  central  organ,  dominating  the  cell-life,  as, 
in  fact,  a  nerve-centre.     The  psychic  unity  of  the  cell  here  finds 
full  expression  :  perhaps  no  individuation  so  complete  (within 
its  limits)  will  be  found  again  until  we  reach  the  highest  self- 
consciousness  of  man.    Now  since,  from  the  psychological  side, 
organic  structure  is  but  organised  racial  and  subracial  experience, 
and  since  every  human  being  begins  life  as  a  monocellular 
protozoon  (fertilised  ovum),  may  not  the  unity  of  human  con- 
sciousness be  in  some  degree  a  debt  due  to  our  own  immemorial 
protozoic   lineage  ?     That  the   lesson   learned  then  was   not 
forgotten  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  it  is  repeated,  so  to  speak, 
by  each  one  of  us.    The  monocellular  stage  might  by  this  time 
have  been  slurred  over,  or  taken  for  granted ;  but  it  is,  we 
know,    invariable    and  well    defined.    Spermatozoon    merges 
with  ovum,  and  then  only,  from  the  resultant  unity,  the  new 
life  can  begin.    Thus  the  fact  that  the  human  body  is,  in  all 
its  complexity  and  vital  multiplicity,  the  offspring  of  a  single 
cell,  gives  it  an  organic  unity  that  would  otherwise  be  unattain- 
able.   Yet  this  unity,  so  far  as  present  knowledge  shows,  is 
in  the  case  of  the  human  body  merely  a  physiological,  not,  as 
with  the  protozoon,  a  physico-psychical  unity.    Not,  at  any 
rate,  so  far  as  the  distinctively  human  self-consciousness  is 
concerned.     The  living  human  organism,  like  any  other,  may, 
it  is  true,  be  regarded  as  in  some  sense  a  psychosis,  but  it  is  a 
psychosis  which  for  the  most  part  goes  on  quite  below  the 
threshold  of  conscious  mentality.   It  is  a  somatic  as  distinguished 
from  a  cerebral  psychosis.    Under  exceptional  circumstances 
it  sometimes,  doubtless,  overflows  its  normal  bounds,  welling 
up  into  the  sphere  of  cerebral  consciousness,  but  apart  from 
certain  rare  or  vague  intimations  of  its  presence,  and  apart 
from  its  contribution  to  the  general  feeling-tone,  it  lies  per- 
manently beyond  our    ken.     Now,   as    regards  the  normal, 
distinctively  human,  cerebral  consciousness,  it  is  of  the  greatest 


6  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

interest  to  note  that  Science  has  utterly  failed  to  identify  any 
unitary  centre  of  such  consciousness  in  the  brain.  Descartes 
long  ago,  on  a  'priori  grounds,  located  it  in  the  pineal  gland, 
but  this  was  mere  guesswork,  of  course.  So  far  from  there 
being  any  one  centre  of  consciousness,  it  would  appear  that 
there  are  many,  for  modern  research  strongly  favours  the  view 
that  it  is  "  generated  "  in  the  sensory  cortex  of  the  brain  at  the 
synapses  or  junctions  of  the  innumerable  neurones  which  arise 
or  terminate  therein.  The  apposed  parts  of  two  meeting 
neurones  are  probably  joined  by  a  thin  layer  of  highly-specialised 
material,  the  so-called  psycho-physical  substance.  This 
material  offers  a  certain  resistance  to  the  flow  across  it  of  the 
nervous  impulse,  but  when  the  nervous  impulse  avails  to  over- 
come this  resistance,  consciousness  is  "  generated "  by  its 
passage  from  neurone  to  neurone  through  the  intervening 
substance  or  synapse.  Thus,  though  the  sensory  area  of  the 
cortex  may  in  a  sense  be  regarded  as  the  seat  of  consciousness, 
it  is  not  a  unitary  centre,  but  multiple,  diffused  centres,  that  we 
find  therein.  Sparks  of  consciousness,  bright  or  dim,  scintillate 
here  and  there,  as  the  conquering  nervous  impulses  pass  to  and 
fro.  Where  are  these  sparks  conjoined  in  the  unitary  flame 
of  self -consciousness  ?  The  question  is  either  crucial  or  meaning- 
less, it  seems  to  me.  They  are  the  vivid  centre  of  that  picture 
of  which  the  feeling-tone,  the  general  somatic  psychosis,  is  the 
dim  unfocussed  background.  That  they  are  somehow  fused 
and  synthetised,  introspection,  it  is  alleged,  plainly  declares. 
But  not,  it  would  seem,  in  the  brain.  Why  not,  then,  in  the 
brain-psychosis,  in  the  brain  as  racial,  plus  individual,  ex- 
perience, in  the  brain  as  focus  of  that  wider  and  vaguer  experi- 
ence which  we  call  our  body,  of  which,  too,  with  all  its  complex 
multiplicity,  we  are  conscious  as  one  totality  ?  On  this  view, 
what  happens  at  the  synapses  is  not  the  generation,  but  rather 
the  intensification  of  a  pre-existent,  the  concentration  of  a 
diffused,  consciousness.  Nothing  new  comes  into  existence, 
but  something  hitherto  imperceptible,  vivified  by  self-limitation, 
flashes  across  the  chiaroscuro  of  the  mental  arena.  Conscious- 
ness has  unity,  at  least  in  the  sense  that  it  is  continuous,  for 
the  brain,  the  entire  organism,  is  at  least  a  dynamic  unity. 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

A  particulate  emphasis  of  some  psychic  element  is  not  incom- 
patible with  such  unity  as  this  implies.  If  the  mind  claims 
a  higher,  supra-cerebral  unity,  it  must  condescend  to  justify 
its  claim. 

Nothing  brings  home  to  us  more  forcibly  the  presence  and 
power  of  the  remote  past  within  us  than  a  consideration  of  the 
part  played  by  Instinct  in  human  life.    Anatomically,  a  true 
instinct  is  a  congenitally  organised  or  at  least  predetermined 
neural  system.    Physiologically,  it  is  a  mechanism  by  which  a 
relevant  perception,  or  the  idea  of  such  a  perception  in  the  absence 
of  any  inhibiting  preoccupation,  starts  a  whole  train  of  purposive 
actions,  more  or  less  complex  and  prolonged.    Psychologically, 
it  is  the  organic  subconscious  memory  of  racial  activities  that, 
being  more  or  less  vital  to  existence,  have  successfully  run  the 
gauntlet  of    natural   selection  and  established  their  claim  to 
survival.    Yet  this  description  is  quite  inadequate,  if  we  do  not 
add  that  an  instinct  is  self-effectuating,   dynamised  by  the 
momentum   of   innumerable   repetitions,   the   embodiment   of 
some  primal  need,  that,  as  a  psychologist  well  remarks,  is  apt 
to  rough-hew  our  ends,  shape  them,  in  detail,  as  we  will.     The 
man  who  spends  a  long  life  in  the  accumulation  of  millions 
is  obeying  the  same  instinct  as  the  dog  who  buries  a  bone. 
Eliminate  from  humanity  the  reproductive  instinct  and  its 
correlatives,  and  what  would  remain  of  poetry,  art,  religion  ? 
The  entire  paraphernalia  of  militarism  is  but  the  elaboration  of 
the  combatant  and  allied  instincts,  and  the  devotee  of  sport  is 
the  spiritual  kinsman  of  the  fox  that  he  hunts  and  the  tiger 
for  which  he  lies  in  wait.    No  dude  or  professional  beauty,  no 
actor,  I  might  add,  can  afford  to  throw  stones  at  a  peacock ; 
no  devotee  of  postage-stamps  or  bric-a-brac  to  make  merry  at 
the  expense  of  a  jackdaw  or  a  monkey.     There  are  instincts 
and  instincts,  of  course  ;  the  main  division  is  into  those  which 
are  self-regarding  and  those  which  are  concerned  with  the 
interests  of  the  race.     Thus  the  instinct  for  co-operation,  shared 
by  all  social  animals,  is  the  basis  of  all  human  civilisation  and 
industry.1    We  cannot  do  without  instincts  ;  they  are  the  raw 
material  of  life  ;   but  we  can  and  must  choose  whether  we  will 

1  What  Maeterlinck,  writing  of  Bees,  calls  the  Spirit  of  the  Hive. 


8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

serve  them  or  make  them  serve  us.  To  be  the  lifelong  thrall 
of  some  paltry  self -regarding  instinct  ("  sport  "  or  what  not)  is 
to  be  a  mere  part  of  nature.  And  Hegel  has  well  said — though 
for  some  readers  it  may  be  a  hard  saying — that  in  so  far  as  a 
man  is  a  mere  part  of  nature,  he  is  everything  that  he  ought 
not  to  be.  Still  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that,  though,  from  a 
superficial  point  of  view  innate  qualities  and  capacities — 
instincts  are  capacities— may  be  regarded  as  free  gifts,  yet  this 
conception  of  their  nature  is  not  ultimate.  A  given  organism 
is  from  the  evolutionary  standpoint  not  something  definitely 
isolated  from  the  unity  of  nature.  It  is  merely  the  growing- 
point,  or  one  among  many  growing-points,  of  a  continuous 
life-process  that  began  countless  ages  ago  at,  or  below,  the 
bottom  rung  of  the  organic  scale,  and  has  mounted  without 
intermission  to  its  present  stage  of  development.  Life  is  a 
torch  that  is  never  extinguished,  but  is  handed  on  from  one 
generation  to  another,  with  all  its  established  potencies  intact. 
They  smoulder  quiescent  in  the  gametes,  but  infallibly  revive  in 
the  developed  organism  to  which  these  give  birth.  So  regarded, 
instincts  are  clearly  no  free  gift  of  nature.  They  are  dearly-won 
adaptations,  hard-bought  victories  of  life  over  its  environment ; 
and  it  is  one  and  the  same  life  that  wins  and  that  wears  the 
crown. 

A  word  must  now  be  said  on  the  subject  of  heredity  in  its 
narrower  proximate  sense,  the  inheritance  of  human  character- 
istics in  general  and  of  family  traits  in  particular.  So  much 
good  work  is  now  being  done  in  this  field,  that  every  year,  nay, 
every  month,  contributes  to  the  sum  of  our  positive  knowledge. 
Facts  come  in  faster  than  theory  can  assimilate  them  ;  and  the 
conclusions  of  to-day  may  be  falsified  to-morrow.  However, 
the  importance  of  the  subject  is  obvious,  and  any  discussion 
of  the  problems  of  individuality,  which — as  in  the  case  of  certain 
loud  and  confident  apostles  of  a  shallow  transcendentalism — 
conveniently  ignores  its  difficulties,  is  thereby  self-condemned 
as  inadequate  and  false.  And,  first,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
modern  view  of  heredity  makes  no  distinction  between  the 
inheritance  of  so-called  mental  and  physical  qualities.  Both  are, 
in  fact,  demonstrably  inherited  in  the  same  numerical  propor- 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

tion.  Pearson,  by  a  separate  investigation  of  the  inheritance 
of  definite  mental  and  bodily  characteristics  in  school  children, 
found  that,  as  regards  both  sets  of  qualities,  the  resemblance 
between  children  of  the  same  parents  amounted  to  fifty  per 
cent.  Galton,  on  the  basis  of  an  investigation  of  heredity  in 
certain  animals,  has  formulated  his  results  to  the  effect  that, 
in  a  given  case,  *5  of  the  inborn  characteristics  will  be  derived 
from  the  two  parents  ('25  from  each),  '25  from  the  grandparents 
collectively  ('0625  from  each),  '125  from  the  great-grand- 
parents taken  together  ('015625  from  each),  and  so  on  in 
similarly  diminishing  proportion.  This  law,  further  elaborated 
by  Pearson,  and  in  some  slight  degree  corrected  on  abstruse 
mathematical  grounds,  is  by  him  acclaimed  as  a  scientific 
generalisation  of  immense  importance,  comparable,  for  its  power 
of  resuming  in  one  brief  statement  innumerable  facts,  to  Newton's 
famous  law  of  gravitation.  Apparently,  on  this  hypothesis, 
the  inborn  qualities  of  an  individual  will  be  fully  covered  by  the 
sum  of  inherited  qualities  (S  =  1)  only  when  the  lineage  has  been 
carried  back  ad  infinitum.  Go  back  only  a  few,  say  ten,  genera- 
tions, and  you  have  already  reached  the  source  of  the  great 
majority — some  nine  hundred  and  ninety-eight  out  of  each 
thousand — of  inherited  characteristics.  But  go  back  as  many 
generations  as  you  like,  and  a  residue,  albeit  infinitesimal,  of 
inborn  qualities,  not  yet  accounted  for,  will  confront  you  still. 
And  in  dealing  with  human  individuality  it  is  to  be  noted 
that  some  quite  inconspicuous  but  deep-seated  quality,  of  remote 
and  obscure  origin,  may  quite  well  be,  in  any  given  case,  the 
little  leaven  that  leavens  the  whole  lump.  Hence,  in  part,  the 
apparently  paradoxical  results  often  attained  by  consideration 
of  the  recent  family  history  of  remarkable  personalities.  Beyond 
all  available  human  records,  beyond  all  human  ancestry,  beyond 
the  pre-human  mammalian  and  sub-mammalian  stock,  beyond 
the  primeval  monocellular  starting-point,  even  to  the  ground- 
work of  inorganic  nature,  we  must  pass  for  our  ideal  completion 
of  the  sum  of  inborn  mental  and  physical  characteristics.  There 
the  manifestation  of  the  contemporary  human  career  has  its 
dawn  ;  there  the  Ego  begins  its  aeonic  march  towards  the 
fulness  of  predestined  activity.  It  is  further  to  be  noted  with 


TO  MAKERS  OFfMAN 

reference  to  Galton's  law,  that  it  is  a  statement  of  averages  only 
for,  "the  introduction  of  the  Mendelian  law,  combined  with 
the  results  of  recent  cytology,  makes  it  likely  that  in  any  given 
individual  the  maternal  and  paternal  factors  lie  side  by  side 
and  separate  out  in  the  gametes  (ova  or  spermatozoa)  of  that 
individual,  so  that  we  do  not  inherit  equally  from  all  grand- 
parents of  each  generation,  but  all  from  some  and  nothing 
from  others."  *  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  great 
as  is  the  role  of  heredity,  there  are  other  factors  to  be  taken  into 
consideration,  which  to  some  extent  certainly  limit  its  deter- 
mining power.  The  anatomical  basis  of  a  fully-developed 
individuality  contains  many  structural  elements  not  organised 
at  birth,  corresponding  with  qualities  and  faculties  peculiar 
to  the  individual,  acquired,  not  innate.  The  nervous  system 
of  Man  may  be  roughly  described  as  consisting  of  sensori-motor 
arcs  of  three  principal  levels,  lower  (or  spinal),  intermediate  (or 
sensorial),  and  higher  (or  associational).  Professor  Flechsig 
has  clearly  demonstrated  that  the  neurones  composing  the  arcs 
of  the  higher  (association)  level  attain  structural  perfection  at 
a  much  later  age  than  those  of  other  parts  of  the  nervous  system. 
Moreover,  "it  is  characteristic  of  these  arcs  of  the  higher  or 
third  level  that  their  organisation,  their  inter-connections,  by 
means  of  which  the  simpler  neural  systems  of  the  first  and 
second  levels  are  combined  to  form  systems  of  great  complexity, 
are  congenitally  determined  in  a  very  partial  degree  only,  and 
are  principally  determined  in  each  individual  by  the  course  of 
its  experience."  2  We  see  then,  that  in  this  highest  and  hence 
most  humanly  significant  region  of  the  nervous  system,  the 
ultimate  physiological  disposition  is  not  rigidly  predetermined 
by  innate  structural  configuration,  but  in  great  measure  plastic 
to  the  play  of  those  internal  and  external  processes  of  action, 
reaction,  and  adaptation,  which  are  summarised  as  "  experi- 
ence." 3  Now,  experience  is  never  mere  passivity,  and  if,  as  is 

1  Communicated  by  Dr.  W.  Nevill  Heard. 

2  Physiological  Psychology,  by  W.  McDougall,  M.A.,  M.B. 

8  Prof.  Spitzka,  by  investigation  of  the  brains  of  distinguished  men,  has 
established  the  fact  that  they  are  exceptionally  rich  in  association  fibres. 
Cf.  Brit.  Med.  Journ.,  15th  Feb.  1908,  "  The  Brains  of  Distinguished  Men." 


INTRODUCTORY  il 

conceivable,  there  is  in  every  individuality  some  unique  and 
original  potency,  something  wholly  self -derived,  it  is  here  in 
particular  that  its  traces  will  presumably  be  found.  On  this 
view,  a  human  individuality  would  be  regarded  as  a  centre  of 
force  in  a  far  higher  sense  than  any  mere  lump  of  radium  ;  it 
would  have,  so  to  speak,  a  dynamic  apriorism,  by  which  its 
ultimate  character,  as  recorded  in  the  final  organisation  of  the 
arcs  of  highest  level,  would  be,  in  part  at  least,  determined. 
McDougall  holds  that  in  true  volition  there  is  a  concentration 
of  neural  energy  apparently  contravening  the  law  of  least 
resistance  and  strongly  suggestive  of  a  unique  activity  of  will. 
Here,  it  may  be,  we  are  on  the  threshold  of  a  mystery  which 
has  long  puzzled  the  wisest.  The  word  "  will "  is  one  which  is 
in  a  high  degree  ambiguous,  but,  in  the  sense  in  which  McDougall 
uses  it,  it  may  well  signify  the  intervention  of  that  underived 
and  unshared  power  which,  if  it  exist,  constitutes  the  dynamic 
apriorism  of  the  Ego.  The  question  is  one  for  experimental 
investigation,  rather  than  for  argument.  Even  if  it  were 
settled  in  the  affirmative  sense,  the  question  would  still  remain 
whether  such  a  dynamic  apriorism  were  not  a  manifestation 
of  a  higher  logical  apriorism  ;  whether,  that  is,  the  develop- 
ment of  individual  character,  granted  its  autonomous  basis, 
does  not  conform  to  the  type  of  a  dialectical  process  more 
fundamentally  than  to  that  of  a  mere  system  and  centre  of 
"  force."  If  Man  be  a  mere  mechanism,  no  matter  whether  or 
not  in  part  self-impelled,  his  life  must  conform  to  mechanical 
principles  ;  he  must  inevitably  follow  the  path  of  least  resist- 
ance ;  and  any  appearance  of  other  than  mechanically-deter- 
mined conduct,  of  strictly  rational  or  purposive  conduct,  must, 
of  course,  be  illusory.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find  that  the 
life-work  of  typical  characters  invariably  demonstrates  in  greater 
or  less  degrees  the  efficient  control  of  some  deliberately  adopted 
and  consistently  executed  principle  or  purpose,  the  mechanical 
hypothesis  is  obviously  out  of  court.  The  more  so,  if  it  also 
proves  to  be  the  case  that  precisely  those  types  of  individuality 
whichare  universally  acclaimed  asthe  highest  andmost  significant, 
are  those  most  hopelessly  unintelligible  from  the  mechanical 
point  of  view. 


12  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

McDougall  inclines  to  the  belief  that  the  activities  of  the 
neurones  of  the  third  or  highest  level  have  no  immediate  psychical 
correlates,  and  serve  merely  to  combine  and  co-ordinate  the 
activities  of  those  arcs  of  the  sensory  level  that  do  contribute 
psychical  elements.    In  other  words,  that  part  of  the  general 
brain-psychosis  which  goes  on  in  these  arcs  of  the  third  level 
is  normally  above  consciousness,  just  as  the  somatic  psychosis 
of  the  body  in  general  is  normally  below  it.    The  former  belongs 
in  fact  to  the  trans-liminal  or  supra-liminal,  just  as  the  latter 
belongs  to  the  subliminal  self.    But  under  exceptional  condi- 
tions, in  those  moments  of  stress  or  exaltation,  when,  doubtless, 
new  tracts  are  opened  up  in  the  arcs  of  the  higher  level,  and 
new  combinations  effected  between  the   sub-systems  of  the 
sensory  level,  it  may  well  be  otherwise.     Such  moments  are 
commonly  accompanied  by  a  feeling  of  expansion,  a  sense  of 
enlarged  power,  which  may  plausibly  be  interpreted  as  the 
psychical  correlates  of  the  opening  up  of  a  fresh  neuronal  tract 
in  the  higher  level,  or  the  establishment  of  a  fresh  neuronal 
anastomosis.     The  feeling  of  expansion  is  no  delusion,  since, 
by  the  functional  change  that  accompanies  it,  the  mental  or 
practical  powers  are  in  some  degree  permanently  enlarged. 
It  may  not  be  without  interest  as  a  further  introduction  to 
the  study  of  individuality  in  the  field  of  concrete  life  and  action, 
to  recount  very  briefly  the  main  views  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
Ego  set  forth  by  leading  philosophers,  those  of  them,  at  least, 
who  have  held  positive  as  opposed  to  merely  critical  or  de- 
structive   theories    on    the    subject.    Socrates    first    demands 
mention,  but  hardly  more  than  that,  on  account  of  his  peculiar 
attribution    of     otherwise     unaccountable    premonitions    and 
intimations  to  an  inner  divine  voice,  a  "  demonic  "  element, 
underlying  his  consciousness.    For  Plato  the  soul  is^in  itself 
indestructible,  and,  through  reason,  in  which  it  participates, 
of  a  divine  nature.     It  sways  and  controls  the  body ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  body  no  less  sways  and  controls  the  soul. 
This  interaction  is  mediated  by  a  lower  sensuous,  irrational 
and  mortal  faculty  of  the  soul.    Between  the  rational  and 
irrational  parts  of  the   soul   appears  a  faculty   called   BvfLos, 
courage,  heart — the   "  irrascible  "  element  of  the  personality. 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

The  soul  by  its  participation  in  reason  inclines  to  the  ideal  and 
eternal  sphere,  by  its  participation  in  sense  to  the  material 
and  temporal  order  ;  and  accordingly  alternates  between  them. 
For  Aristotle,  the  soul  is  related  to  the  body  as  form  to  matter  ; 
it  is  animating  principle.  Apart  from  that  of  the  body  its  exist- 
ence is  inconceivable.  The  highest  faculty  of  the  Ego  is  thought 
or  reason  (vow),  which  is  absolutely  simple,  immaterial, 
self-subsistent,  and  underived.  This  pure  activity  is  independent 
of  and  unaffected  by  matter,  and  on  the  death  of  the  body 
remains  eternal  and  immortal.  For  the  Stoics,  nothing  in- 
corporeal exists,  and  the  interaction  of  anything  purely  ideal 
with  anything  material  is  inconceivable.  What  things  mutually 
act  must  be  of  like  nature ;  spirit,  divinity,  the  soul,  conse- 
quently, is  a  body,  but  of  another  sort  than  matter  and  the 
outward  body.  For  Plotinus  and  the  Neoplatonist  School, 
individual  souls  are  "  amphibia,"  intermediate  in  nature  between 
the  higher  element  of  reason  and  the  lower  of  sense  ;  now  involved 
in  the  latter,  now  returning  to  their  source.1  Turning  now  to 
the  moderns,  we  find  at  most  but  vague  and  dubious  recogni- 
tion of  the  entity  of  the  Ego  in  Descartes  and  Spinoza.  In 
Leibnitz,  on  the  contrary,  we  find  a  wealth  of  deeply  interesting 
and  suggestive  thoughts  upon  the  subject.  Extension  was  for 
him  but  an  abstraction  necessitated  by  "  the  grossness  of  our 
senses,"  a  metaphor  in  fact.  The  true  connections  of  things 
are  not  causal,  as  causality  is  commonly  conceived,  but  intellectual. 
Leibnitz,  after  having  reduced  the  geometrical  extension  of  the 
atom  to  zero,  endowed  it  with  an  infinite  extension  in  the 
direction  of  its  metaphysical  dimension.2  External  causation 
being,  like  space,  an  illusion,  all  activity  is  a  logical  develop- 
ment from  within,  and  the  apparent  actions  and  reactions  of 
individual  things  are  due  to  the  fact  that,  having  a  common 
divine  origin  they  are  in  pre-established  harmony.  The 
infinite  number  of  monads  (reals  or  individuals)  express,  each 
from  its  own  specific  point  of  view,  yet  each  thus  far  compre- 
hensively, the  universe  as  a  whole,  the  function  of  each  being 

1  For  most  of  the  above  details  I  am  indebted  to  Schwegler.     Cf.  Hist,  of 
Phil.,  pp.  41,  84,  114-5,  125,  142. 
*J.  T.  Mere. 


14  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

ideally  complemented  by  that  of  all  the  others.  Such  profound 
conceptions  are  necessarily  misrepresented  in  any  brief  and 
abstract  statement,  but  we  shall  have  a  good  deal  more  to  say 
about  them  and  their  author  in  the  later  chapters  of  this  work. 
In  modern  terms  the  formula  for  the  Leibnitzian  doctrine  would 
be  :  Involution  is  the  truth  of  Evolution,  and  Logic  is  the  truth 
of  Involution.  Kant,  like  Aristotle,  was  at  the  same  time  a 
thorough  empiricist  and  a  transcendentalist  in  his  theory  (or 
theories)  of  the  Ego.  He  believed,  without  doubt,  that  there 
is  behind  every  human  personality  a  noumenal  subjectivity, 
whose  immortality,  though  unproved  and  incapable  of  proof, 
could  legitimately  be  postulated.  "  In  an  act  of  moral  volition, 
he,"  says  Dr.  Stirling,  "  will  have  no  pathological  element  what- 
ever present ;  our  rational  will  shall  be  absolutely  free."  Theo- 
retically, the  soul  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere  phenomenon  ; 
in  the  interests  of  morality  we  must  assume  the  rational  freedom 
of  the  will — "  /  ought,  therefore  I  can"  His  self-styled,  but — 
ultimately — rejected,  disciple  Fichte  followed  Leibnitz  rather 
than  Kant  in  his  view  as  to  the  nature  of  the  ego,  but  surpassed 
even  Leibnitz  in  the  claims  made  on  its  behalf.  The  ego  — 
noumenal,  not  empirical — is  for  Fichte  everything  :  it  is  the 
Absolute  and  all  its  determinations.  Its  appearance  is  the 
result  of  a  self-limitation  of  its  true  universality.  "  As  many 
parts  of  reality  as  the  ego  determines  in  itself,  so  many  parts  of 
negation  it  determines  in  the  non-ego,  and,  conversely,  as  many 
parts  of  reality  as  the  ego  determines  in  the  non-ego,  so  many 
parts  of  negation  it  determines  in  itself."  x  In  Hegel's  philo- 
sophy the  ego  as  individual  is  again  completely  dwarfed  by  the 
Ego  as  universal.  I  do  not  discuss  the  ultimate  validity  of 
this  view ;  it  is  obviously  too  rigidly  logical  to  be  at  present 
largely  available  for  the  interpretation  of  actual  personalities. 
We  shall  have  more  to  say  about  Hegel  later  on.  The  clearer, 
because  more  analytical  and  shallower,  philosophy  of  Schopen- 
hauer, in  that  it  regards  all  external  happenings  as  dependent 
upon  an  occult  reality  somewhat  unfortunately  denominated 
"  will,"  seems  more  to  our  present  purpose.  What  I  dispute, 
however,  is  that  the  so-called  "  will,"  in  so  far  as  it  is  admittedly 

1  Schwegler,  Hist,  of  Phil.,  trans,  by  Stirling. 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

blind  and  unselfconscious,  has  any  right  to  its  exalted  title  or 
claims.  Blind  purpose  or  appetite  is  one  thing,  and  true  voli- 
tion is  quite  another.  What  is  worth  noting  in  Schopenhauer  is 
his  insistence  on  the  fact  that  character  is  ultimately  determined 
not  from  without  but  from  within  ;  also  that  it  is  a  much  less 
tractable,  more  stubbornly  self-maintaining  thing,  upon  the 
whole,  than  is  commonly  admitted.  Herbert  Spencer,  borrowing 
from  Coleridge  the  hint  that  life  is  a  tendency  towards  individua- 
tion,  and  enlarging  its  scope,  finds  this  tendency  in  all  processes 
characterised  by  the  integration  of  matter  and  the  dissipation 
of  motion,  that  is,  in  all  evolutionary  processes.  He  traces  in 
detail  the  transition  of  a  relatively -homogeneous  matrix,  through 
successive  differentiations  and  integrations,  to  a  definite  co- 
herent heterogeneity  of  structure  and  function — that  is,  to 
complete  individuation.  This  point  reached,  there  is  a  longer 
or  shorter  period  of  equilibrium,  during  which  the  adjustment 
of  internal  to  external  relations  is  more  or  less  adequately  main- 
tained. Then  the  entire  process  is  reversed,  dissolution  succeeds 
to  evolution,  and  we  arrive  once  more  at  our  starting-point — 
an  indefinite  incoherent  homogeneity.  Such,  in  terms  of  motion, 
or  force  and  matter,  is  the  generalised  statement  of  the  pheno- 
menal order,  in  which  Man  as  an  individual  is  of  course  included. 
The  principle  has  been  almost  universally  accepted  ;  it  is,  indeed, 
too  often  hypostatised,  so  that  foolish  and  unthinking  persons 
talk  of  "  Evolution  "  as  though  it  were  some  god,  and  fancy 
that  when  they  have  shown  how  such  or  such  an  organism  was 
"  evolved,"  there  is  no  more  to  be  said.  Of  the  so-called  axioms 
underlying  Spencer's  deduction,  one  at  least,  the  dictum  that 
the  Force  of  the  Universe  is  constant  in  amount,  since  it  "  can 
neither  arise  out  of  nothing  nor  lapse  into  nothing,"  seems 
disrespectful  to  the  resources  of  the  "  Unknowable,"  and  is, 
to  say  the  least,  of  a  highly  disputable  character.  The 
universal  tendency  towards  individuation  does  not  seem  to 
have  suggested  to  Spencer  that  the  whole  process  of  evolution, 
as  elaborated  by  him  in  numerous  volumes,  might  be  but  a 
manifestation  of  individualities  and  of  Individuality  in  general ; 
that  the  individual  is  perhaps  not  the  creature  of  evolution,  but 
evolution  the  self-display  of  the  individual.  Or  that  the  mean- 


16  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

ingless  revolution  of  barren  cosmic  machinery,  returning  ever 
in  lame  and  impotent  conclusion  to  its  indefinite  incoherent 
origin,  would  bear  another  and  more  intelligible  aspect  if  we 
admit  the  possibility  that  the  individual  ego  underlies  and  con- 
ditions a  given  focus  of  evolution  ;  and  that,  having  reached  its 
highest  present  attainable  level  of  manifestation,  this  ego 
withdraws  to  assimilate  the  products  of  experience,  leaving 
the  world  enriched  by  the  results  of  its  creative  work.  It  is 
true,  of  course,  that  the  entertainment  of  such  a  possibility 
would  involve  the  conception  of  the  universe,  dynamically 
regarded,  not  as  a  closed  circuit  of  unvarying  magnitude,  but 
as  a  stream  of  ever-increasing,  self-renewed  volume  and  flow. 
Such  a  supposition  is  neither  more  nor  less  legitimate  than 
Spencer's  own,  as  regards  compatibility  with  ascertained  laws  ; 
while  some  will  consider  that  it  is  far  more  satisfactory  in  all 
other  ways. 

Mr.  Bradley  considers  that  the  self,  whether  identified  with 
the  body,  the  total  contents  of  experience  at  a  given  moment, 
the  average  contents  of  experience,  the  "  essential "  self,  the 
personal  identity,  whether  regarded  as  a  monad,  as  what 
interests,  as  opposed  to  the  not-self,  as  mere  subjectivity,  or 
as  will,  cannot  be  so  conceived  as  to  cover  the  known  facts  and 
at  the  same  time  escape  the  just  charge  of  being  in  many  ways 
contradictory.  He  therefore  declines  to  accept  the  final  reality 
of  the  self,  though  assigning  to  it  a  high  rank  in  the  phenomenal 
order.  "  Body  and  soul  are  mere  appearances,  distinctions 
set  up  and  held  apart  in  the  whole.  .  .  .  The  soul  and  its 
organism  are  each  a  phenomenal  series.  Each,  to  speak  in 
general,  is  implicated  in  the  changes  of  the  other." 1  Mr. 
Bradley  does  not  believe  in  the  interaction  of  mind  and  body 
in  the  sense  that  mere  body  can  act  upon  bare  mind,  or  con- 
versely. But  he  does  believe  that  the  physical  and  psychical 
series,  going  on  side  by  side,  are  each  modified  by  the  presence 
of  the  other,  and  that  sometimes  the  one  predominates  while 
its  fellow  becomes,  as  it  were,  latent ;  and  sometimes  the  other. 
It  is  only  for  convenience  sake  that  we  are  justified  in  considering 
either  series  as  independent.  Mr.  Bradley  assents  to  the 
1  Appearance  and  Reality, 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

physical  origin  of  mind,  but  with  certain  reservations.  Matter 
is  an  abstraction  ;  and  the  material  cause  of  the  soul  will  never 
be  the  whole  cause.  Compared  with  the  physical  world,  the 
soul  is  by  far  less  unreal.  It  shows  to  a  larger  extent  that  self- 
dependence  in  which  Eeality  consists.  This  from  the  author 
of  Appearance  and  Reality  is  a  high  testimonial,  since  he  con- 
cedes final  reality  to  nothing  short  of  the  Absolute  itself. 

So  much  then  for  the  philosophers.  Before  summarising 
their  main  conclusions,  I  will  add  a  few  words  with  regard  to 
the  results  of  psychic  research.  It  is,  of  course,  as  yet  in  its 
infancy,  and  is  regarded  with  great  suspicion  in  many  quarters, 
particularly  by  those  who  know  little  or  nothing  about  the 
matter.  As  one  who  has  followed  the  chief  available  records 
with  close  interest  for  some  years,  I  assert  without  hesitation 
that  work  is  now  being  done  in  this  department  which,  as 
regards  precision  of  method  and  impartiality  of  inference,  can 
challenge  comparison  with  more  favoured  investigations.  At 
the  point  now  reached  it  would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that 
the  survivial  of  personal  consciousness  after  death,  and  the 
possibility  of  entering  into  ccmmunication  with  post-mortem 
personalities,  have  been  fully  established.  But  no  competent 
and  impartial  reader  of  Hyslop's  work,  Science  and  a  Future 
Life — to  give  one  example  out  of  many — will  deny  that  enough 
carefully-sifted  evidence  has  been  collected  to  make  good  a 
strong  prima  facie  case  for  further  investigation.1 

Roughly  speaking,  it  would  seem  then  that  we  have  to 
choose  between  three  main  conceptions  as  to  the  nature  of 
things,  using  that  word  in  its  widest  and,  I  fear  I  must  add, 
its  vaguest  significance.  First,  from  the  Spencerian,  a  posteriori, 
standpoint,  the  ego  may  be  regarded  as  the  final  meeting-point 
of  innumerable  converging  activities,  whence,  as  it  were  by 
resilience,  they  reissue  to  modify  the  environment.  From 
this  point  of  view,  whose  provisional  validity  is  within  certain 
limits  unquestioned,  the  ego  is,  at  most,  a  mere  ephemeral 
product,  whose  essence  is  its  visible  processes  of  becoming, 

1 1  will  also  call  attention  to  the  remarkable  case  of  the  daughter  of  Judge 
Edwards,  reported  in  the  Annals  of  Psychical  Science,  vol.  vi.,  No.  31,  pp. 
508-10. 

2 


i8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and,  at  least, — nominis  umbra.  Secondly,  we  may  conceive 
of  the  ego  as  an  entity,  substantial,  if  not  material,  the  per- 
manent basis  or  ground  of  mental  and  organic  unity.  And 
some,  no  doubt,  would  so  extend  the  range  of  its  influence  as 
to  maintain  that  all  the  processes  which  directly  prepare,  cul- 
minate in,  constitute,  and  result  from  a  given  human  career, 
are  in  a  sense  manifestations  of  this  underlying  pre-existent 
power  and  reality.  From  this  point  of  view  the  "  empirical 
ego  "  is  as  it  were  the  lens,  which,  by  a  certain  specific  affinity, 
selects  from  every  part  and  every  past  period  of  the  universe, 
and  brings  to  a  focus,  those  rays  and  those  only  which  emanate 
from  its  own  noumenal  ego.  The  externalised  forces  which 
build  themselves  up  into  the  physical  basis  of  individuality 
are,  at  a  certain  point,  or  certain  points,  of  development,  met 
by  a  current  of  inverse  direction,  and  thenceforth  become 
increasingly  subject  to  its  modifying  power  and  control.  The 
third  and  last  view  as  to  the  nature  of  the  ego,  is  that  which 
acknowledges  that  the  basis  of  a  particular  individuality,  how- 
ever great  and  exalted,  is  not  ultimately  an  independent 
substance  or,  if  you  prefer  the  term,  entity  (though  both  in  a 
far  higher  degree  and  truer  sense  than  any  merely  physical 
existence),  but  rather  a  permanent  and  essential  factor  of  some 
higher  and  more  comprehensive  existence.  One  or  other  of 
these  three  views  will  be  found,  I  think,  to  correspond  in  essen- 
tials with  any  theory  of  the  ego  that  can  lay  claim  to  serious 
attention.  It  may  be  asked  whether  the  second  and  third 
of  these  three  conceptions  of  the  ego  regard  Man  in  his  entirety 
as  a  part  and  product  of  Nature.  Obviously,  this  must  depend 
on  what  we  understand  by  Nature,  a  word  of  convenient 
ambiguity, — which  can  be  made  to  include  everything  or  to 
exclude  anything,  as  required  by  the  exigencies  of  the  moment. 
As  Mr.  Bradley  points  out,  there  is  the  Nature  of  prosaic 
empiricism  ;  but  there  is  also  the  Nature  of  the  poet.  If 
Nature  is  to  be  taken  as  a  closed  system  of  more  or  less  measur- 
able and  identifiable  "  forces,"  from  which  all  that  is  as  yet 
refractory  to  the  inquisition  of  the  test-tube  and  the  scalpel 
is  rigidly  excluded,  then  without  doubt  all  supporters  of  the 
second  and  third  theories  of  the  ego  must  regard  Man  as  a 


INTRODUCTORY  19 

supernatural  being.  But  this,  if  wise,  they  will  do  without 
the  least  hope  or  desire  of  limiting  the  search  for  causal  uniform- 
ities underlying,  or,  if  you  will,  governing  his  life  and  conduct. 
The  seeming  paradox  will  be  a  stumbling-block  only  to  those 
who  are  obfuscated  by  confusion  of  a  higher  and  lower  point  of 
view.  Cerebral  growth  and  organisation  are  one  aspect  of 
character,  and  a  most  important  one,  doubtless.  The  other 
and  more  essential  is  its  manifestation  as  human  thought  and 
action,  and  the  ideal  significance  of  these.  And  this  will  be 
our  subject  in  the  ensuing  pages.  Valuable  works  have  already 
been  published,  dealing  almost  exclusively  with  the  physio- 
logical and  pathological  aspects  of  human  "  genius."  As  a 
medical  man,  I  fully  appreciate  the  importance  of  this  side  of 
the  problem,  but  I  cannot,  as  a  human  being,  admit  the  finality 
or  even  the  provisional  adequacy  of  the  implied  point  of  view. 

The  Science  of  human  character  has  many  departments, 
but  all  specific  investigations  of  its  genetic  or  physical  conditions, 
morbid  correlations,  and  aberrant  vagaries,  must  be  regarded 
as  ancillary  to  the  supreme  interest  of  its  teleological  significance 


II 

CLASSIFICATION 

Ambiguities — The  man  of  action — The  artist — The  philosopher  and  the 
scientific  discoverer — The  ethico-religious  pioneer — Subsidiary  or  mixed 
types — Examples  and  qualifications. 

THE  practice  of  labelling  distinguished  men,  in  accordance  with 
their  official  sphere  of  activity,  as  "  men  of  action,"  "  men  of 
thought,"and  so  forth,  is  one  which  has  many  conveniences,  but  is 
nevertheless,  in  the  absence  of  due  precautions,  a  fertile  source  of 
error  from  the  true  psychological  point  of  view.  Uncritically 
employed,  it  assumes,  without  demonstration,  fundamental  dis- 
tinctions of  temperament  and  predisposition,  which  may  or 
may  not  exist.  That  the  great  statesman  or  conqueror,  the 
poet  or  musician,  the  philosopher  or  man  of  science,  the  saint 
or  religious  founder,  is  such,  in  each  case,  not  by  mere  force  of 
circumstance,  wholly,  or  at  least  in  some  degree,  but  by  con- 
straint of  inborn  irresistible  proclivity,  native  genius,  or  heaven- 
born  mission,  is  not  so  evident  as  to  many  it  would  seem  to 
appear.  We  all  wish  to  be  exceptional,  and  the  man  of  leisure 
who  has  a  fancy  for  versification  is  not  disinclined  to  believe 
himself  thrown  away  upon  more  sternly  utilitarian  employ- 
ment. But  in  the  absence  of  patronage  for  his  verses  he  may 
make  a  tolerable  bank-clerk  or  solicitor.  This  unproved 
assumption  that,  for  success  in  the  more  highly-esteemed  social 
functions,  inborn  "  genius  "  is  all,  and  mere  environment  nothing, 
is  one  of  the  many  unwarranted  beliefs  with  which  we  tacitly 
conspire  to  flatter  our  amour  propre  at  the  expense  of  reason. 
The  point  requires  investigation,  and  I  propose  to  deal  with  it 
later.  In  the  mean  time  it  may  be  admitted  that  some  attempt 
at  classification  is  not  merely  expedient,  but  even  essential  to 


CLASSIFICATION  21 

the  systematic  treatment  of  human  faculty,  and  I  therefore 
propose,  without  prejudice,  as  the  lawyers  say,  to  avail  myself 
of  that  which  I  find  ready  to  hand.  Famous  men  may  be 
roughly  divided  into  four  great  classes,  according  as  their 
achievements  affect  mainly  the  sphere  of  common  life,  of 
imagination,  of  knowledge,  or  of  morality  and  religion.  The 
four  types  of  human  greatness  are,  accordingly,  the  practical, 
aesthetic,  intellectual,  and  ethical ;  and  this  is  the  method  of 
classification  which  I  have  provisionally  adopted.  Of  each  of 
these  types  I  have  chosen  ten  great  exemplars,  beginning  with 
Julius  Caesar  in  the  first  group,  and  ending  with  Ernest  Renan 
in  the  fourth.  The  analytical  study  of  these  forty  world- 
famous  careers  should  yield  results  of  substantial  value,  and 
can  hardly  be  lacking  in  interest  even  for  the  most  casual 
student  of  human  affairs.  In  assigning  particular  individuals 
to  one  or  another  of  my  four  categories,  I  have  in  the  main  been 
guided  by  conventional  rather  than  deep-seated  psychological 
considerations,  and  I  do  not  conceal  from  myself,  or  the  reader, 
that  in  several  instances  the  question  might  fairly  be  raised 
whether  the  classification  adopted  is  finally  appropriate.  The 
several  types  are  by  no  means  sharply  defined,  but  overlap  and 
interweave  in  a  somewhat  perplexing  fashion.  This  will  perhaps 
be  more  clearly  seen  if  I  indicate  briefly  the  broad  characteristics 
of  each  type  of  career,  and  then  give  examples  of  the  ambiguities 
that  present  themselves  in  the  case  of  particular  personalities. 

The  man  of  action  comes  first,  because  his  type  is  upon 
the  whole  the  simplest  and  most  primitive  that  we  have  to 
deal  with.  He  works  upon  the  raw  material  of  contemporary 
life,  making  it  subserve  the  ends  of  his  ambition,  rough-hewing 
it  in  various  ways,  but  seldom  attempting  to  shape  it  in  accord- 
ance with  any  high  ideal  or  far-seeing  purpose.  For  the  future 
as  such  he  cares  little  ;  the  exigencies  of  the  moment  are,  for 
the  most  part,  all-absorbing  ;  he  meets  them  and  masters  them 
from  day  to  day,  well  knowing  that  fresh  difficulties  will  con- 
front him  on  the  morrow.  His  own  history  is  inextricably 
involved  in  the  history  of  his  country  and  his  age  :  to  under- 
stand the  one  you  must  be  familiar  with  the  other,  for  his 
instinctive  objectivity  enables  him  to  lavish  himself  on  the  field 


22  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  public  life,  rendering  futile  the  most  industrious  gleaning  of 
mere  personal  traits  and  anecdotal  gossip.  The  same  is  true,  in 
a  way,  of  all  men  who  achieve  anything  noteworthy  ;  but  in 
the  case  of  the  artist,  or  the  man  of  letters,  we  have  at  least  a 
definite  and  fairly  comprehensive  body  of  work,  by  the  study 
of  which  we  may  hope  to  learn  much  of  the  personality  offici- 
ally expressed  therein.  The  life-work  of  the  man  of  action  has 
no  such  clear-cut  limitations  :  it  is  merged  in  the  achievements 
of  his  contemporaries,  and  even  of  his  predecessors.  But  the 
fact  that  the  man  of  action  concentrates  upon  the  production 
of  immediate  effects  undoubtedly  renders  these  more  con- 
spicuous and  more  readily  identifiable  than  they  would  other- 
wise be,  and  this  is  a  compensating  advantage.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  our  investigation,  that  is,  from  that  of  the  country  or 
countries  governed  by  him,  this  absorption  of  the  man  of  action 
in  the  consideration  of  things  making  for  immediate  prestige 
and  profit  has  most  serious  drawbacks.  If  Kichelieu,  for 
example,  had  not  contented  himself  with  an  untiring  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  the  monarchy,  and  indomitable  efforts  to  increase 
the  importance  of  his  country  as  a  power  among  the  nations, 
but  had  also  carried  out  his  early  schemes  of  internal  reform, 
how  different,  and  how  much  happier,  the  history  of  that 
country  might  have  been.  The  taille  and  the  iniquitous  gabelle, 
the  sale  of  offices,  and  kindred  abuses,  were,  after  a  few  tentative 
efforts  at  reform,  left  practically  untouched.  The  policy  of 
laissez  oiler  in  regard  to  fiscal  matters,  sanctioned  by  the  great 
name  of  her  supreme  statesman,  became  traditional  in  France. 
The  horrors  of  the  Revolution  were  the  inevitable  outcome  of 
this  neglect.  So,  too,  we  have  to  thank  the  bigotry  and  the 
brutal  haste  of  Cromwell  to  be  done  with  his  black  task  in 
Ireland,  for  the  existence  of  two  irreconcilable  nations  within 
the  bounds  of  that  ill-starred  isle.  By  encouraging  foreign 
states  to  accept  Irish  volunteers,  he  got  rid  of  some  forty 
thousand  able-bodied  Catholic  malcontents,  while,  to  replace 
them,  immense  tracts  of  Ulster,  Leinster,  and  Munster  were 
allotted  to  Protestant  settlers.  Cromwell  returned  to  England 
in  triumph,  to  be  greeted  by  immense  throngs  with  a  paean  of 
praise,  for  which,  to  do  him  justice,  he  seems  to  have  cared 


CLASSIFICATION  23 

little.  The  voice  of  rebellion  was  for  the  moment  silenced,  but 
at  what  a  cost,  for  future  generations,  in  bitterness,  faction- 
fury  and  unavailing  remorse  !  Such,  broadly-speaking,  is  the 
man  of  action,  a  man  instinctively  objective,  fiercely  impatient 
of  the  slow  methods  of  nature,  living  for  his  own  race  and  his 
own  little  hour,  ruthlessly  determined  on  the  reaping  of  an 
unripe  harvest,  producing  immense  apparent  benefits  that  are, 
too  often,  grievous  curses  in  disguise.  His  type  is,  for  humanity, 
what  a  robust,  but  morally  undeveloped  childhood  is  for  the 
individual,  at  the  stage  when  the  youngster  is  first  rejoicing  in 
the  unrestrained  activity  of  its  ill-governed  and,  too  often, 
destructive  limbs. 

In  strong  contrast  with  the  man  of  action,  the  representative 
of  the  aesthetic  type  is  pre-occupied  with  ideals,  and  his  activi- 
ties are  increasingly  devoted  to  the  expression  of  these.  He 
is  objective  in  a  far  less  degree  than  the  man  of  action, — only 
becomes  so,  as  a  rule,  when  his  powers  have  reached  their  full 
maturity,  and  even  then  only  to  that  extent  essential  to  the 
clear  manifestation  (as  distinguished  from  the  full  realisation) 
of  his  cherished  subjectivity.  This  weakness  in  relation  to 
actualities  is  a  characteristic  limitation  of  the  aesthetic  type  of 
personality,  and  it  has  not  escaped  the  keen  eye  of  one  who, 
while,  upon  the  whole,  he  must  certainly  be  assigned  to  this 
category,  was  in  many  ways  an  exception  to  its  rules.  "  It  is 
ever  the  besetting  fault  of  cultivated  men,"  says  Goethe, 
"  that  they  wish  to  spend  their  whole  resources  on  some 
idea,  scarcely  any  part  of  them  on  tangible  existing  objects." 
And  again,  more  drastically,  in  the  Articles  of  Wilhelm 
Meister's  Indenture  :  "  Whoever  works  with  symbols  only,  is  a 
pedant,  a  hypocrite,  or  a  bungler."  And  Coupland  has  called 
attention  to  the  significant  fact  that  in  Act  III.  of  the  second 
part  of  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  first  Euphorion,  the  embodiment  of 
poetic  genius,  then  Helena,  his  mother,  the  personification  of 
classic  beauty,  vanish,  never  to  return.  "  Faust  was  not 
always  to  remain  at  the  stage  of  Art."  It  is  true  that  Helena 
has  bequeathed  to  him  her  garment  and  veil.  In  these  he 
envelops  himself  ;  they  raise  him  aloft,  bear  him  away  from 
the  dream-world  of  Arcadia,  and  set  him  down  on  the  solid  soil  of 


24  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

actuality — a  journey  so  vast  that  even  Mephistopheles  lags 
behind  him,  in  spite  of  his  seven-league  boots.  Faust  has  not 
brought  with  him  Euphorion's  abandoned  lyre,  for  his  task 
henceforward  is  not  the  perfecting  of  symbols  but  the  wresting 
of  barren  wastes  from  the  sea,  and  their  subdual  to  the  service 
of  man.  Yet  this  weakness  of  the  poet  or  artist  in  relation  to 
actualities  is  to  some  extent  compensated  by  the  austerity  of 
his  attitude  towards  the  more  tenuous  and  plastic  material  with 
which  by  preference,  and  perhaps  too  exclusively,  he  deals. 
As  to  his  choice  of  this  material,  whether  he  works  in  marble,  on 
canvas,  with  language  or  musical  tones,  the  question  how  far 
this  choice  is  predetermined  by  inborn  capacity,  how  far 
subject  to  environmental  modification,  will  confront  us  later  on. 
The  point  now  to  be  noted  is  that  the  true  artist  will  be  content 
with  nothing  short  of  what  he  considers  perfection,  yet  that 
perfect  representation  of  an  ideal  conception,  even  in  marble,  is 
far  more  easily  attained  than  the  full  realisation  of  an  analogous 
ideal  in  the  moral  or  intellectual  order  as  a  governing  principle 
of  life.  But  on  this  aspect  of  his  function  the  artist  commonly 
turns  his  back,  affecting  a  fastidious  contempt  for  the  ill-ordered 
world  of  actuality,  or  querulously  harping  on  the  contrast 
between  the  harmonious  grace  of  his  own  ideal  "  creations  " 
and  the  vulgarity,  crudity,  and  discord  which  elsewhere  offend 
his  jaundiced  eye.  So  he  betakes  himself  to  the  magnification 
of  his  office,  sulks  if  excluded  from  the  place  of  honour  at  the 
King's  banquet,  refuses  his  food,  and,  in  justification,  an- 
nounces that : 

"  If  the  Arts  should  perish, 

The  world  that  lacked  them  would  be  like  a  woman 
Who,  looking  on  the  cloven  lips  of  a  hare, 
Brings  forth  a  hare-lipped  child." 

As  a  pathological  theory,  this  attribution  of  an  atavistic 
abnormality  to  the  morbid  susceptibility  of  a  pregnant  woman 
is  distinctly  original,  but,  I  fear,  will  not  hold  water.  The 
position  of  the  hypothesis  of  "  maternal  impressions  "  in  general 
is  nothing  if  not  precarious,  and  the  particular  deformity  named 
is  in  any  case  not  so  to  be  explained.  Such  presumptuous 
bards  need  to  be  reminded  that  if  "  the  Arts  "  (read  "  fine  arts  " 


CLASSIFICATION  25 

and,  in  particular,  poetry)  should  perish,  beauty  and  sublimity 
would  not  thereby  be  banished  from  the  universe.  Conceivably, 
the  day  may  come — it  may  be  nearer  now  than  we  think — when 
such  inculcation  of  high  aims  fed  by  rapt  contemplation  and 
illumined  insight  as  "  the  Arts  "  can  proffer  shall  so  far  have 
been  effected  that  exclusive  preoccupation  with  symbols  and 
fictions  will  no  longer,  as  in  the  past,  command  the  lifelong 
interest  of  the  elect  spirits  of  the  race.  Truly,  as  Zarathustra 
complains,  the  poets  lie  too  much ;  and  they  have  also  (pace 
Upton  Sinclair)  been  flattered  and  coddled  to  an  altogether  un- 
warrantable extent.1  Physiologically  speaking,  though  I  am 
far  from  asserting  the  final  adequacy  of  any  physical  cause,  the 
poetic  impulse  is  an  affair  of  adolescence,  of  that  wonderful 
quickening  of  the  sensuous  and  emotional  affectivities  which 
accompanies  the  dawn  of  sexual  appetite  and  power.  Is  not 
every  lover,  in  some  sort,  a  poet  ?  But,  inasmuch  as  it  requires 
almost  a  lifetime  to  achieve  and  manifest  beyond  fear  of  cavil 
the  mastery  of  any  even  symbolic  mode  of  self-expression,  the 
poet  or  artist  must,  if  he  is  not  to  lose  the  motive-power  before 
it  has  been  translated  into  action,  remain  approximately  at  the 
adolescent  stage  of  emotional  exaltation  all  his  days.  And,  in 
fact,  Coleridge  has  defined  genius  (in  a  too-limited  sense,  I 
contend)  as  the  faculty  of  carrying  on  the  feelings  of  childhood 
into  the  powers  of  manhood.  This  is  a  characteristic  instance 
of  the  sort  of  uncritical  adulation  which  men  of  these  sthetic 
type  have  come  to  expect,  in  so  far,  that  is,  as  it  assumes 
that  the  peculiarity  in  question  is  purely  positive,  that  the 
powers  of  manhood  are  merely  enhanced,  not  also  limited, 
by  the  persistency  of  supernormal  affectivity  throughout  life. 
Meredith  suggests  a  truer  view  when  he  says  of  happiness,  "  we 
distil  that  fine  essence  through  the  senses  ;  and  the  act  is  called 
the  pain  of  life.  It  is  the  death  of  them."  For  happiness, 
read  wisdom,  and  the  statement  will  be  not  less  true.  Higher 
faculties  must,  by  inexorable  necessity,  develop  out  of  and  at 
expense  of  lower.  Coleridge's  definition  of  genius  degrades 
that  quality  while  seeking  to  exalt  it.  Not  all  men  of  genius  are, 

1  It  is  true  that  most  of  these  attentions  have  been,  so  far  as  the  recipients 
were  concerned,  of  a  post-mortem  character.     But  this  is  a  detail. 


26  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

like  him,  vague,  dreamy  sentimentalists.  Those  who  are  and 
remain  such  are  cases  of  arrested  development.  The  penalty  of 
living  in  the  imagination  is  that  one  is  not  deprived  of  one's 
illusions.  That  Goethe  at  the  age  of  seventy-three  betrayed 
his  facile  susceptibility  by  falling  so  violently  in  love  with 
Ulrica  von  Levezow  as  to  set  the  tongues  of  all  the  gossips  of 
Marienbad  wagging,  is  a  fact  which  excites  the  naive  enthusiasm 
of  some  ingenuous  biographers.  It  is  really  more  amusing  than 
impressive  ;  and  I  fearlessly  assert  that  if,  with  honest  boyish 
imprudence,  he  had  married  Frederica  at  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
or  Lili  (his  fifth  flame,  or  thereabouts)  at  twenty-six,  he  would 
have  learned  more  about  woman  in  twelve  months  than,  by 
his  peculiarly-cautious  method,  he  actually  learned  in  as  many 
years.  But  all  this  is  to  some  extent  digressive,  and,  in  con- 
clusion of  my  preliminary  discussion  of  the  aesthetic  type,  I  will 
merely  point  out  the  significant  fact  that,  between  the  birth  of 
Titian,  "  the  greatest  painter,  if  not  the  greatest  genius  in  art 
that  the  world  has  produced,"  and  that  of  Bacon,  nearly  the 
first  of  a  long  line  of  intellectual  pioneers  and  discoverers,  almost 
a  hundred  years  intervened.  The  sun  of  Science  dawns  when 
that  of  Art  is  in  process  of  decline. 

Taking  the  man  of  action  as  our  primitive  type  of  mere 
unreflective  objectivity,  and  the  random  pursuit  of  power  for 
the  satisfaction  of  instinctive  needs  and  capacities,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  aesthetic  type  is,  in  some  important  respects,  higher 
and  more  advanced.  Ambition,  as  motive,  has  to  some  extent, 
as  we  shall  find,  been  replaced  by  aspiration.  The  activities 
conform  less  closely  to  the  reflex  type ;  they  are  mediated  by 
reference  to  an  ideal  standard  of  beauty  or  fitness,  more  or 
less  consciously  and  coherently  formulated.  But  this,  un- 
fortunately, only  applies  to  the  official  activities,  the  art-work 
pure  and  simple  :  in  matters  of  everyday  life  we  shall  discover 
abundant  evidence  of  weakness,  vagary,  and  caprice,  It  is 
true  that  Goethe  informed  Eckermann  that  he  wished  all  his 
actions  to  be  regarded  as  of  symbolic  import.  Goethe,  I 
consider,  upon  the  whole,  about  the  most  interesting  personality 
who  ever  lived  on  this  earth,  but  not  by  any  means  the  greatest. 
He  is  also  in  many  ways  atypical,  despite  of  the  fact  that  he 


CLASSIFICATION  27 

sometimes  acted  weakly  and  even  contemptibly.  Our  third 
type  of  greatness — the  intellectual — comprises  two  main 
groups,  the  philosophers  and  the  scientific  discoverers.  Of 
these,  the  former  group  is  in  some  respect  intermediate,  for 
many  poets  have  in  later  life  turned  to  philosophy  and  achieved 
some  distinction  therein.  The  transition  from  art  to  science 
is  mediated  by  cosmic  emotion,  by  that  sense  of  the  grandeur 
and  beauty  of  the  universe  which  first  seeks  expression  in 
the  solitary  excogitation,  later  in  the  organised  investigation 
of  its  hidden  purpose  or  law.  The  man  of  science,  it  will  be 
said,  is  born,  not  made.  In  a  sense,  yes,  but  with  reservations. 
The  aesthetic  phase  may  be  almost  imperceptible,  it  may  be 
passed  over  very  lightly,  but  there  is  at  least  no  doubt  that  it 
often  occurs.  Spinoza  drew  portraits  of  his  friends ;  Newton 
as  a  lad  drew  and  painted  from  nature,  besides  indulging  in 
versification  ;  Bacon's  prose  has  been  praised  for  its  beauty  by 
Shelley ;  Galileo's  dramatic  sense  compelled  him  to  embody 
his  astronomical  discoveries  in  dialogues  of  singular  force  and 
charm  ;  his  memory  was  stored  with  a  vast  variety  of  old  songs 
and  stories,  and  many  of  the  poems  of  Ariosto,  Petrarca,  and 
Bernini.  Hegel  during  his  early  manhood  perpetrated  some 
rather  melancholy  verse,  but  later,  during  his  courtship,  dis- 
played a  transient  proficiency  in  the  art.  Darwin  was  a  lover 
of  great  music,  and,  at  least  until  the  date  of  his  marriage 
(aged  twenty-eight),  an  ardent  reader  of  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
Scott,  Byron,  and  Wordsworth.  As  a  little  boy,  too,  he  had 
a  mania  for  inventive  lying,  which,  doubtless,  indicates  the 
potential  novelist,  or  so  it  seems  to  me.  D'Arcy  Power  says 
of  Harvey  that  he  could  formulate  his  knowledge  "  in  exquisite 
language,"  and  that  so  familiar  was  it  (i.e.  his  knowledge)  that 
he  could  afford  to  indulge  in  similes  and  images.  Descartes, 
at  the  age  of  twenty -five,  experienced  a  sort  of  ecstatic  vision,  in 
which  what  he  took  to  be  his  evil  genius,  symbolised  as  a  terrible 
storm,  seemed  to  be  driving  him  in  the  direction  of  a  church. 
So  of  the  ten  examples  of  the  intellectual  type  which  I  propose 
to  study,  only  two,  Leibnitz  and  Kant,  seem  to  show  no  aptitude 
or  inclination  for  imaginative  as  distinguished  from  purely 
theoretic  pursuits.  Yet  the  lifework  of  these  also  is  clearly 


28  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

motived  by  that  cosmic  emotion  which  I  regard  as  an  austerely- 
exalted  form  of  poetic  impulse.  In  character,  as  evinced  by 
the  general  conduct  of  life,  the  truth-seekers  compare,  in  some 
respects,  favourably  with  the  seekers  after  beauty.  This  may. 
be  partly  attributable  to  innate  differences  of  temperament 
and  susceptibility,  but  is  also  in  great  measure  due  to  the 
superiority  of  science  to  art  as  a  mental  and  moral  discipline. 
There  is  less  room  for  vagary  and  caprice,  a  sterner  demand 
for  the  subjection  of  wayward  impulses.  An  artist  has  only 
to  please  himself,  and  he  knows  that  he  will  command  the 
approbation  of  many  others  ;  the  results  of  scientific  research 
are  invariably  subjected  to  the  coldest  and  most  ruthless  criti- 
cism. The  sex-element  is  much  less  in  evidence  as  a  disturbing 
factor  in  the  lives  of  great  thinkers  or  discoverers  than  in  those 
of  great  poets,  artists,  or  composers.  The  reason  of  this 
discrepancy  is  not  far  to  seek  :  the  aesthetic  worker  is  always 
pre-occupied  with  sex  problems  and  relations,  and  for  success 
in  exploiting  these  he  needs  to  identify  himself  in  imagination 
with  his  own  most  impassioned  conceptions.  Only  the  strongest 
and  most  self-contained  individuality  can  be  proof  against  the 
perils  of  such  exploitation  of  sex-emotion.  Then  again,  the 
man  of  science  at  least,  perhaps  even  the  philosopher,  is  in 
a  higher  degree  dependent  upon  co-operation  than  the  artist. 
Co-operation  strongly  favours  the  development  of  moral 
character  ;  the  independence  of  it,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  young 
men  born  to  great  wealth,  makes  for  egotism  and  conceit.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  it  is  rare  to  find  a  scientific  discoverer  of  the 
first  rank  who  is  not  in  some  degree  a  speculative  thinker,  or  a 
philosopher  of  the  first  rank  who  has  altogether  shirked  the 
discipline  of  empirical  research. 

Upon  the  whole  it  is  clear  that  the  intellectual  is  a  more 
advanced  type  than  the  aesthetic,  both  on  a  priori  grounds, 
and  because,  historically  and  biographically,  it  matures  later. 
The  typical  artist  will  appear  somewhat  boyish  and  crude  in  the 
company  of  typical  thinkers  or  men  of  science.  We  need  not 
regret  this,  because  there  is  an  aesthetic  side  to  science,  as  yet 
little  appreciated,  which  will  amply  compensate  any  loss  by 
the  inevitable  defection  from  purely  aesthetic  pursuits  of  our 


CLASSIFICATION  29 

abler  and  more  exalted  spirits.    So  far  as  mere  art  survives, 
it  is  largely  by  assimilation  of  scientific  methods  and  aims. 

Our  fourth  type,  which  I  consider  the  highest  and  most 
humanly-significant,  is  one  for  which  it  is  difficult  to  find 
an  apt  and  comprehensive  title.  For  want  of  a  better  name  I 
have  called  this  the  ethical  type  of  personality,  but  it  might 
also  be  called  religious,  or — but  for  the  fear  of  misunderstanding 
— spiritual.  It  includes  the  religious  founder,  the  prophet,  the 
saint,  the  theologian — using  that  word  in  its  widest  sense — the 
moralist,  and  the  social  reformer.  It  includes,  in  short,  all 
whose  main  interest  and  endeavour  is  to  exalt  the  dignity  and 
worth  of  human  life,  either  by  the  mere  force  of  example,  by 
precept  and  moral  suasion,  or  by  profound  investigation  of 
the  ends  and  motives  of  conduct.  Properly  speaking,  it  ex- 
cludes all  who  rely,  in  so  far  as  they  rely,  on  compulsion,  even 
for  the  advance  of  ideal  ends — for  this  is  the  method  peculiar 
to  the  man  of  action.  But  this  is  a  test  which  cannot  be  too 
rigidly  enforced,  since  it  would  exclude  Mahomet,  Luther,  and 
even  Gregory  the  Great  from  the  class  to  which,  on  general 
grounds,  they  obviously  belong.  The  man  of  action  bears 
to  the  ethical  man  a  relation  analogous  to  that  of  the  artisan 
to  the  artist.  The  material  of  each  is  human  life  in  general, 
but  whereas  the  man  of  action  is  guided  mainly  by  considerations 
of  common  everyday  utility  or  expediency,  the  ethical  man 
strives  for  the  realisation  of  consciously-formulated  universal 
and  ideal  ends.  And  in  so  far  as  he  is  true  to  his  type,  he  cares 
only  for  such  results  as  are  brought  about  by  the  free  voluntary 
acceptance  of  his  doctrines  and  aims.  The  will  of  man  is  his 
noble  material :  to  evoke  its  hidden  potencies,  to  kindle  its 
latent  ardours,  to  reveal  its  implied  aspirations,  is  the  high 
task  that  he  undertakes.  He  is  the  only  true  alchemist,  agon- 
ising to  achieve  the  transmutation  of  the  base  metal  of  sordid 
aims  and  low  motives  into  the  gold  of  brave  beliefs  and  generous 
actions.  He  synthetises  the  qualities  of  the  three  subordinate 
types  of  character,  sharing  at  his  best  the  objective  aims  and 
the  human  material  of  the  man  of  action,  the  ideal  standard 
of  the  artist,  the  fidelity  to  fact  of  the  man  of  science.  The 
ethical  man,  like  the  man  of  action,  has  been  in  evidence, 


3o  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

not  merely  at  particular  epochs — like  the  artist  and  the  man 
of  science — but  at  irregular  intervals  throughout  history.  He 
is  indispensable,  since,  without  him  and  what  he  stands  for, 
life  would  be  valueless.  He  is  in  fact  the  supreme  valuer,  and 
though,  of  course,  not  exempt  from  the  faults  and  illusions 
of  his  tune  and  race,  has  proved,  upon  the  whole,  not  altogether 
unworthy  of  his  godlike  function.  I  have  spoken  of  the  aesthetic 
and  ethical  personalities  as  idealistic,  and  so,  broadly  speaking, 
they  are  and  must  be,  but,  needless  to  state,  they  may  not  all 
be  professors  of  idealism  in  the  technical  sense.  Even  the 
blankest  materialism,  the  crudest  realism,  is  in  some  sense  an 
ideal  to  its  devotee  and  exponent.  It  is  a  deliberately  adopted 
formula,  the  highest  truth  known  to  him,  something  which  he 
accepts  and  promulgates  without  reference  to  its  acceptability 
to  others  or  consequences  to  himself.  And  so  even  an  "  im- 
moralist "  like  Nietzsche,  whose  principle  is  the  futility  of  all 
principles,  must  be  classed  among  representatives  of  the  ethical 
type.  I  mention  these  extreme  cases  as  a  warning  that  I 
decline  to  commit  myself  in  advance  to  the  advocacy  of  any 
popular  branch  of  ethical  theory.  I  may  have  my  own  views, 
but  I  am  not  so  arrogant  as  to  expect  all  men  to  share  them  ; 
and  if  a  given  individual  teaches  the  unlimited  rights  of  the 
irresponsible  ego,  the  apotheosis  of  brute  force,  or  the  sanctitude 
of  Dionysian  frenzy,  that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that,  as  a 
valuer  of  life,  he  is  entitled  to  a  place  among  representatives  of 
the  ethical  type  of  personality.  There  are  philosophers  who 
reject  philosophy,  and  saints  who  do  not  believe  in  religion. 

Such,  then,  are  our  four  types  of  individuality ;  we  have 
now  to  discuss  the  necessary  qualifications  of  such  a  classification. 
In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  asked  why  I  have  not  assigned  a 
place  to  the  inventors.  Not  because  I  am  unaware  of  their 
importance,  for  it  is  of  course  obvious  that  such  epochal  in- 
ventions as  that  of  printing,  of  the  steam  locomotive,  and  the 
telegraph,  have  simply  revolutionised  social  and  economic 
arrangements.  The  importance  of  his  function  must  not, 
however,  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  inventor,  as  such,  is  not 
a  primary  but  a  mixed  type  of  individuality.  He  combines 
the  characteristics  of  the  intellectual  (scientific),  the  aesthetic 


CLASSIFICATION  31 

(or  constructive),  and  the  practical  types.  Obviously,  the 
consideration  of  the  four  primary  types  is  a  task  more  than 
sufficient,  and  logically  precedes  that  of  subsidiary  or  mixed 
ones.  I  confess,  too,  that  while  freely  recognising  the  debt 
that  we  owe  to  the  inventor,  I  find  him  less  interesting,  humanly 
speaking,  than  the  man  of  action,  the  artist,  the  thinker,  or  the 
saint.1  The  excellent  Mr.  Smiles  may  perhaps  have  bequeathed 
his  enthusiasm  for  research  in  this  field  to  some  less  didactic 
admirer.  Let  us  hope  so,  and  that  the  result  may  be  forthcoming 
in  the  shape  of  an  adequate  discussion  of  the  soul  of  the  inventor. 
The  inventor  is  not,  of  course,  peculiar,  as  an  individual,  in 
that  he  combines  the  qualities  of  several  primary  types.  All 
individuals  do  that  in  some  degree,  for  the  purely  typical 
personality  is  an  abstraction  which  does  not  actually  occur. 
What  excludes  the  inventor  from  ranking  as  representative  of 
a  primary  human  category  is,  that,  however  true  to  his  type, 
we  know  that  we  shall  find  in  him  something  of  the  man  of 
action,  something  of  the  artist,  and  something  of  the  man  of 
science.2  Representatives  of  the  primary  types,  on  the  other 
hand,  though  they  always  vary  in  some  degree  from  the  type 
to  which  they  predominantly  belong,  do  so  in  an  indefinite 
and  unforeseen  way.  Caesar,  for  example,  probably  the  greatest 
man  of  action  that  the  world  has  yet  produced,  would  not  have 
been  so  great  had  not  the  faults  peculiar  to  his  type  been,  in 
his  case,  largely  counterbalanced  by  a  strong  ethical  bias.  He 
was  the  supreme  ruler  of  men  just  because  he  was  also  some- 
thing more,  because,  although  he  certainly  relied  mainly  on 
compulsion,  he  used  it  as  a  rule  with  strict  moderation,  and, 
whenever  he  thought  it  safe,  gladly  availed  himself  of  the 
higher  method  of  moral  suasion.  Charlemagne,  too,  though 
in  most  respects  a  typical  representative  of  the  man  of  action, 
has  points  of  affinity  with  the  ethical  type.  His  policy,  though 
largely  opportunist,  was  also,  and,  I  think,  increasingly,  motived 

1  Bacon  has  truly  observed  that  many  of  the  most  important  invention 
have  been  rather  the  result  of  happy  chance  than  reasoned  investigation. 
Novum  Organum,  bk.  i.  Aph.  cix. 

2  The  highest  type  of  inventor  is  hardly  distinguishable  from  the  scientific 
discoverer. 


32  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

by  higher  considerations.  He  loved  no  book  better  than 
Augustine's  City  of  God,  wherein  he  found  the  description  of 
the  perfect  Emperor,  who  holds  his  power  as  something  given 
or  lent  by  God.  His  friendships  with  Alcuin  the  theologian, 
Pope  Hadrian,  and  Abbot  Sturm,  no  doubt  fostered  the  sense  of 
high  responsibility  and  of  a  heaven-derived  mission,  which  is 
clearly  indicated  by  many  of  his  actions.  The  career  of  William 
the  Silent  furnishes,  however,  the  most  salient  example  known 
to  me  of  the  great  man  of  action  whose  public  activities  are 
determined  not  by  personal  ambition  but  by  loyalty  to  an 
ideal  aim.  From  the  time  when,  as  a  young  man  of  twenty-six, 
he  listened  in  silent  horror  to  the  French  king's  revelation  of 
the  ruthless  plan  concocted  with  Philip  n.  for  the  extirpation 
of  heresy  (and  heretics)  in  the  Netherlands,  he  never  faltered 
in  his  resolve  "  to  drive  this  Spanish  vermin  from  the  land." 
He  was  born  a  Prince  in  a  day  when  that  meant  more  than  we 
can  even  dimly  realise.  He  died  a  "  Beggar  "  in  almost  the 
literal,  as  well  as  the  adoptive,  sense  of  the  word.  Yet,  though 
he  might  challenge  the  title  of  saint  against  many  who  bear  it 
in  the  market-place,  he  must  upon  the  whole  be  accounted  a 
man  of  action.  In  virtue,  that  is,  of  his  methods,  not  of  his 
ends,  which  were  altogether  unexceptionable ;  and,  indeed,  of 
the  characteristic  faults  and  limitations  of  the  typical  man  of 
action  we  find  in  him  hardly  a  trace.  The  case  of  Oliver  Crom- 
well is  in  many  ways  obviously  analogous  to  that  of  William 
of  Orange.  He,  too,  may  fairly  claim  to  have  entered  the  field 
of  action,  not  primarily  in  pursuit  of  personal  gain  or  advance- 
ment, but  under  strong  compulsion  of  a  sense  that  there  was 
work  which  needed  to  be  done,  which  could  be  done  by  no  other 
man  but  himself.  "  I  would  have  been  glad,"  he  exclaimed, 
in  an  hour,  truly,  of  bitterness  and  disillusionment,  yet  with 
undoubted  sincerity,  "  I  would  have  been  glad  to  have  lived 
under  my  woodside,  to  have  kept  a  flock  of  sheep — rather  than 
undertake  such  a  government  as  this."  Yet  Cromwell's  career 
is  more  typically  practical  (as  distinguished  from  ethical),  both 
in  its  weakness  and  strength,  than  is  that  of  William  the  Silent. 
No  one  can  fairly  cavil  at  the  inclusion  of  Drake,  Richelieu,  or 
Frederic  the  Great,  among  representative  men  of  action,  though 


CHARI.KMACNE. 
Boiztt  del.  ;  Barlenv,  .Scuff. 


To  face  f.  32. 


CLASSIFICATION  33 

the  two  last-named  have  subsidiary  indications  of  an  aesthetic 
and  intellectual  bias.  Nelson  is,  in  his  own  way,  as  unique  as 
Alexander,  and,  indeed,  with  his  fiery  passion  for  distinction — a 
passion  which  enabled  him  to  triumph  over  the  most  serious 
drawbacks  of  bodily  weakness,  prejudice,  and  misfortune — 
reminds  one  a  little  of  the  great  Macedonian.  There  is  in  the 
temperament  of  Nelson  a  striking  analogy  with  that  of  the 
typical  poet ;  but,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain,  it  was, 
from  the  first,  purely  objective  in  tendency  and  aim.  With 
regard  to  Napoleon,  it  need  merely  be  said  at  present  that 
we  may  search  the  history  of  mankind  in  vain  to  find  a  more 
thoroughly  representative  specimen  of  the  man  of  action.  Of 
aspiration,  as  distinct  from  ambition — the  desire  to  shine  and 
the  determination  to  use  men  as  otherwise  negligible  instruments 
to  that  ignoble  purpose — there  are,  except  possibly  in  its  quite 
early  stages,  no  indications  whatever  in  his  career.  Its  leading 
notes  are  tireless  energy,  instinctive  objectivity,  furious  egotism, 
a  keen  eye  to  dramatic,  or  theatrical,  effect,  and  a  brutal  direct- 
ness of  method.  Very  different  is  the  case  of  Lincoln,  a  true 
man  of  action,  yet  with  strong  affinities  to  the  ethical  type. 
Leland  doubts  "  whether  there  was  ever  so  great  a  man  who 
was,  on  the  whole,  so  good."  But  this  is  not  the  question — 
goodness  in  the  domestic  sense  is  quite  compatible  with  ruthless 
violence  and  rapacity  in  the  public  sphere  of  action.  But 
Lincoln's  relation  to  the  slavery  question  fairly  entitles  him  to 
rank  as  a  man  in  many  ways  superior  to  mere  ambition  and 
lust  for  power.  Still,  the  problem  is  not  so  simple  as  it  appears 
— there  was  a  good  deal  of  mere  ambition,  and  even  perhaps 
a  suspicion  of  demagogy  and  time-serving,  in  his  conduct  at 
times. 

Fewer  ambiguities  present  themselves  with  regard  to  the 
classification  of  representatives  of  the  aesthetic  type.  Dante 
had  in  him  some  inkling  of  a  practical  bias,  but  it  did  not  long 
survive  the  discouragement  of  his  condemnation  and  exile. 
Not  more  of  it,  perhaps,  than  is  common  to  all  artists  of  the 
first  class,  for  it  is  only  those  of  the  second  rank  who  are  devoid 
of  a  leaven  of  Philistinism.  But  in  spite  of  the  unsurpassed 
beauty^of  his  verse,  and  the  superb  virtuosity  of  his  method, 
3 


34  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Dante  may  claim  to  be  almost  as  great  intellectually  as  poetically, 
and  perhaps  even  greater  as  an  ethical  influence.  No  Art  for 
Art's  sake  man  this,  but  a  spirit  aflame  with  zeal  for  the  good, 
and  with  absolute  loathing  for  all  that  it  deemed  false,  mean, 
or  sordid.  The  case  of  Leonardo  is  one  of  great  interest  and 
importance,  and  strongly  supports  my  contention  that  the 
intellectual  type  must,  broadly  speaking,  be  regarded  as  more 
advanced  than  the  aesthetic.  The  little  that  remains  to  us  of 
his  art-work  amply  suffices  to  prove  that  in  capacity,  in  equip- 
ment, he  was  one  of  the  two  or  three  supreme  artists  of  the  world. 
But  Leonardo  was  singularly  free  from  the  vanity  and  the  greed 
for  fame  of  the  typical  artist.  Painting  never  captured  more 
than  the  half  of  his  mind  ;  and  as  he  grew  older  he  turned  with 
ever-increasing  ardour  to  purely  intellectual  interests  and  wonder- 
ful previsionary  glimpses  of  the  future  of  Science.  He  too,  like 
Faust,  was  not  content  to  remain  at  the  stage  of  Art.  In  a  more 
favourable  environment  he  would  probably  have  been  even 
greater  as  a  scientific  discoverer  than  he  actually  became  as  an 
artist.  As  a  blend  of  the  man  of  action,  the  aesthetic,  and  the 
intellectual,  he  inevitably  displayed  an  aptitude  for  engineering 
and  mechanical  invention.  In  Titian,  the  practical  worldly 
element  seldom  lacking  in  artistic  or  poetic  genius  of  the  first 
order,  is  almost  unduly  evident,  yet  with  strangely  little  pre- 
judice to  the  aesthetic  value  of  his  work.  Perhaps  no  artist  so 
great  in  other  ways  was  ever  so  devoid  of  the  qualities  of  the 
highest  or  ethical  type.  I  do  not,  of  course,  assert  or  believe 
that  great  artists  are  necessarily  didactic — their  works  may  have 
no  moral,  but  they  have  at  least  a  morale.  And  this,  in  much, 
even  of  Titian's  latest  work,  is  confessedly  wanting.  Cervantes, 
again,  seems  by  disposition  to  have  had  almost  as  decided  a 
bent  for  action  as  for  literature.  Up  to  the  time  of  his  ransom 
from  slavery  at  Algiers  we  hear  but  little  of  any  pursuits  of  an 
imaginative  kind,  and  his  early  ambition  seems  to  have  been 
for  military  distinction.  But  the  barren  glory  of  Lepanto, 
which  cost  him  the  use  of  a  hand  and  brought  him  no  com- 
pensating advantage,  began  a  process  of  disillusionment  which 
was  completed  by  the  five  years'  ordeal  of  bondage.  The 
brutality  of  the  world  had  so  far  destroyed  his  romantic  dreams 


CLASSIFICATION  35 

that  he  contented  himself  henceforth  with  describing — not 
without  irony  and  self-derision — the  chivalrous  exploits  and 
ideals  which  he  had  once  aspired  to  express  in  action.  His  loss 
was  the  world's  gain,  however,  and  he  could  not  have  become 
the  supreme  artist  he  was  if  he  had  been  spared  the  rebuffs 
incurred  by  his  prior  invasion  of  the  practical  sphere.  Mozart 
is  almost  as  perfect  a  representative  of  the  aesthetic  type  as 
Napoleon  is  of  the  man  of  affairs.  Goethe's  complex  personality 
belongs  in  almost  equal  measure  to  each  of  the  four  primitive 
types,  the  poet  upon  the  whole  predominating  in  him,  and  the 
ethical  factor,  though  ultimately  pronounced  enough,  developing 
latest.  Beethoven,  again,  is  an  artist  and  something  more  ;  he 
never  meddled  with  action  ;  he  was  not  really  intellectual ;  but 
there  is  in  all  his  great  works  a  breath  of  spiritual  exaltation, 
a  something  that  not  merely  expands  and  uplifts,  but  edifies, 
incites,  and  ennobles.  His  music  is,  as  it  were,  an  emotional 
embodiment  of  absolute  religion,  of  religion  that  has  outgrown 
formulas  and  superstitions  ;  it  is  at  once  a  paean  of  emancipation 
and  a  proud  challenge  to  destiny.  Its  appeal  is,  in  short, 
not  merely  to  the  imagination,  but  also,  and  in  perhaps  unique 
degree,  to  the  mil  of  the  listener.  By  this  peculiarity  Beethoven's 
music  is  related  to  the  poetry  of  Dante,  Milton,  and  Shelley, 
rather  than  to  that  of  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  or  Keats.  In 
Walter  Scott  we  have  a  well-marked  example  of  the  blending 
of  imaginative  with  practical  capacity.  The  artist  in  him  was 
overshadowed  and  in  some  degree  vitiated  by  the  man  of  action. 
It  would  hardly  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  he  cared  as  much, 
or  even  more,  for  worldly  and  social  success  as  for  excellence  in 
his  artistic  endeavours — that  ambition  rather  than  aspiration 
was  his  fundamental  motive.  Once,  soon  after  entering  the 
High  School  at  Edinburgh,  Scott,  having  found  himself  at  a 
disadvantage  through  his  ignorance  of  Greek,  expressed  con- 
tempt for  the  language,  whereupon  a  schoolfellow,  the  son  of  an 
innkeeper,  himself  an  excellent  Greek  scholar,  ventured  to 
remonstrate  with  him.  Scott  received  the  friendly  rebuke 
"  with  sulky  civility,  because,  forsooth,  the  birth  of  my  mentor 
did  not,  as  I  thought  in  my  folly,  authorise  him  to  intrude  upon 
me  his  advice."  All  his  life,  in  fact,  though  less  obtrusively, 


36  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

no  doubt,  Scott  maintained  a  certain  deference  for  rank  as  such, 
hardly  compatible  with  a  due  regard  for  ideal  standards.  He 
was  a  little  ashamed  of  being  a  professional  author,  a  little  over- 
anxious lest  it  should  be  forgotten  that  he  was  also  a  "  gentle- 
man." Lockhart  significantly  remarks  that  Scott's  wife  gaily 
acknowledged  the  pleasure  she  took  in  being  "  My  Lady."  It 
would  be  a  mistake,  of  course,  to  make  too  much  of  this  worldly 
element  in  Scott's  nature,  to  regard  him  as  a  mere  worldling 
impelled  by  a  sordid  land-hunger.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  the 
child  in  him  :  a  title  and  estate  were  the  toys  that  pleased  him. 
He  wanted,  as  Lockhart  remarks,  to  revive  the  interior  life  of 
the  castles  he  had  emulated— their  wide-open,  joyous  reception 
of  all  comers — ballads  and  pibrochs — jolly  hunting  fields — 
mirthful  dancers.  What  is  a  more  serious  flaw  is  his  aesthetic 
opportunism — his  willingness  to  court  popularity  by  the  sacrifice 
of  truth  or  beauty.  Thus,  in  the  original  version  of  St.  Ronarfs 
Well,  the  mock  marriage  of  Miss  Mowbray  was  represented  as 
having  been  consummated.  His  publisher  shrank  from  ob- 
truding on  the  public  the  suggestion  of  any  personal  con- 
tamination of  a  high-born  damsel  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Scott,  protesting  that  James  Ballantyne  would  not  have 
quarrelled  with  the  incident  had  it  befallen  a  girl  in  gingham, 
and  that  the  silk  petticoat  made  no  real  difference,  ultimately 
gave  way  very  reluctantly  and  re-wrote  the  episode.  He  always 
protested  that  the  story  was  marred  by  the  change.  As  to  his 
practical  ability,  I  need  only  recall  the  amazing  zeal  and  energy 
with  which  Scott  threw  himself  into  the  preparation  of  the 
festivities  and  processional  pageants  which  celebrated  the 
King's  visit  to  Edinburgh  in  1822.  "  The  strongest  impression 
which  the  whole  affair  left  on  my  mind,"  observes  Lockhart, 
"  was  that  I  had  never  till  then  formed  any  just  notion  of  his 
capacity  for  practical  dealings  and  rule  among  men.  ...  I  am 
mistaken  if  Scott  could  not  have  played  in  other  times  either 
the  Cecil  or  the  Gondomar."  To  have  done  things  worthy  to  be 
written  was,  in  his  eyes,  we  are  told,  a  dignity  to  which  no  man 
made  any  approach  who  had  only  written  things  worthy  to  be 
read.  True  ;  but  this  is  no  sort  of|justification  of  the  man,  who, 
having  chosen  writing  as  his  vocation,  is,  through  weakness  or 


CLASSIFICATION  37 

fear  of  loss  or  censure,  thus  false  to  his  own  insight  and  con- 
science. What  Scott  failed  to  realise  is  that  wordswhich  produce 
actions  partake  in  some  degree  of  the  nature  of  action.  His 
work  is,  consequently,  creative  only  in  a  secondary  sense  :  it 
charms,  but  it  does  not  ennoble.  Scott  never  truly  attained  to 
the  intellectual,  still  less  to  the  ethical  type  of  greatness.  Of 
Turner  we  may  first  remark  that  in  physical  energy  he  far 
exceeded  the  degree  typical  of  the  aesthetic  temperament. 
We  are  told  that  he  had  worked  as  many  hours  as  would  make 
the  lives  of  two  men  of  his  own  age.  He  had  in  him  enough  of 
the  man  of  action  to  subserve  without  serious  detriment  the 
main  purpose  of  his  life.  Intellectually,  he  was  by  no  means 
remarkable  :  he  could  not  express  himself  clearly  in  words  at  any 
length,  but  was,  as  it  were,  bound  down  by  natural  limitations 
to  the  one  outlet  prescribed.  His  forehead  projected  above 
the  eyes,  but  its  upper  portion  was  narrow  and  sloped  towards 
the  cranial  vertex.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  in  his  art- 
work, particularly  the  mythological  pictures,  Turner  endeavoured 
to  set  forth  some  dimly-felt  ethical  purpose  or  warning.  He 
seems  to  have  considered  the  tragic  fate  of  Carthage,  ascribable 
to  the  neglect  of  agriculture,  the  increase  of  luxury,  and  besotted 
blindness  to  the  insatiable  ambition  of  Rome,  as  in  some  sort 
symbolic  of  the  dangers  that  threatened  the  England  of  his  day. 
So,  too,  in  the  proof  of  an  engraving  of  Wickliff's  birthplace, 
he  introduced  a  burst  of  light  which  was  not  in  the  drawing. 
"  There  is  the  light  of  the  glorious  Reformation,"  he  explained 
to  an  inquirer.  Some  fluttering  geese  in  the  foreground  were 
the  superstitions  which  the  genius  of  the  reformer  was  to  drive 
away.  Such  vague  intimations  of  the  hidden  motives  of  an 
artist  are  of  great  interest :  they  have  more  to  do  with  the 
settlement  of  his  ultimate  rank  in  the  world's  esteem  than  many 
dilettanti  are  willing  to  admit. 

Our  last  example  of  the  aesthetic  type  is  Flaubert,  one  of 
the  most  interesting  personalities  of  his  class.  The  son  of  an 
eminent  surgeon,  he  inherited  a  strong  proclivity  to  almost 
microscopic  accuracy  of  detail  and  precision  of  method.  All 
his  early  surroundings  tended  to  enhance  this  inborn  scrupu- 
losity in  regard  to  the  hard  facts  of  life.  His  temperament 


38  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

made  him  an  artist,  but  his  intellect  made  him  the  pioneer  of 
realism  in  art.  His  motives  were  unique  in  their  purity  ;  of 
vulgar  ambition  we  find  in  him  hardly  a  trace.  "  Do  I  long  to 
be  successful,  I,  to  be  a  great  man,  a  man  known  in  a  district, 
in  a  department,  in  three  provinces,  a  thin  man,  a  man  with 
a  weak  digestion  ?  Have  I  ambition,  like  shoeblacks  who 
aspire  to  be  bootmakers,  drivers  to  be  stud-grooms,  footmen  to 
play  the  master,  your  man  of  ambition  to  be  a  deputy  or  a 
minister,  to  wear  a  ribbon,  be  a  town  councillor  ?  All  that 
seems  to  me  very  dismal,  and  attracts  me  as  little  as  a  fourpenny 
dinner  or  a  humanitarian  lecture."  As  to  what  does  attract 
him,  he  is  equally  explicit.  "  For  me  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  except  beautiful  verses,  well-turned,  harmonious,  resonant 
phrases,  glorious  sunsets,  moonlight,  coloured  paintings,  antique 
marble,  and  shapely  heads.  Beyond  that,  nothing."  But  this 
is  not  wholly  accurate,  unless  we  add  that,  for  Flaubert,  the 
true  and  the  beautiful  were  one,  and  that  no  subject  was  too 
gross  or  sordid  to  yield  to  the  enchantment  of  style.  Art,  he 
insisted,  should  be  raised  above  personal  affections  and  nervous 
susceptibilities.  "  It  is  time  to  give  it,  by  means  of  pitiless 
method,  the  precision  of  the  physical  sciences."  He  declared 
that  there  is  no  particle  of  matter  which  does  not  contain  poetry ; 
that  the  artist  should  regard  the  universe  as  a  work  of  art,  whose 
processes  he  must  reproduce  in  his  works.  He  had  a  horror 
of  "  people  of  taste,  the  people  of  pretty  touches,  of  purification, 
of  illusions,  those  who  with  manuals  of  anatomy  for  ladies, 
science  within  the  grasp  of  all,  pretty  sentiments,  and  honeyed 
art,  change,  erase,  remove,  and  call  themselves  classic."  In 
virtue  of  his  unquestioned,  unfaltering,  life-long  fidelity  to  this 
austere  ideal,  Flaubert  is  more  than  an  artist,  more  than  a 
philosopher :  he  is  in  some  sense — much  as  he  would  have 
resented  the  imputation — a  prophet  and  a  seer. 

I  have  already  submitted  evidence  of  the  aesthetic  bias 
which  commonly  underlies,  and,  no  doubt,  in  some  degree 
conditions  the  mental  activities  of  the  philosopher  and  the  man 
of  science.  Men  of  this  class  are  seldom  strongly  drawn  to  the 
field  of  action.  Bacon  is,  of  course,  an  exception,  but  the  results 
of  his  worldly  ambition  were,  we  all  know,  disastrous  to  his  fame 


CLASSIFICATION  39 

and  happiness.  The  rule  seems  to  be  that  a  man  of  great  in- 
tellectuality can  earn  a  modest  living,  but  cares  little  for  success 
in  the  vulgar  sense  of  the  word.  Harvey  and  Spinoza  are  good 
examples  ;  Kant,  Hegel,  and  Newton  were  all  comparatively 
impecunious  for  at  least  the  greater  portion  of  their  lives. 
Descartes  and  Darwin  were  men  of  independent  means  ;  the 
former  in  early  life  renounced  a  title  as  a  useless  encumbrance. 
Leibnitz,  as  the  reward  of  a  life  of  arduous  and  disinterested  toil 
for  humanity,  died  poor  and  almost  friendless,  and  "  was  buried 
more  like  a  robber  than  the  ornament  of  his  country."  As  to 
the  ethico-religious  affinities  of  the  intellectual  type,  these  are 
naturally  most  obvious  in  the  professed  philosophers — Spinoza, 
Kant,  Hegel.  But  may  not  Galileo,  Newton,  and  Darwin,  by 
the  revolution  they  effected  in  the  current  cosmic  and  biological 
conceptions  of  their  times,  by  the  firmness  with  which,  in  the  face 
of  bitter  opposition,  even  persecution,  they  maintained  the 
truth  of  their  discoveries,  by  the  reaction  of  these  discoveries 
upon  the  ethico-religious  consciousness  of  the  civilised  world — 
may  not  such  names  be  regarded  as  of  more  spiritual  significance 
than  those  of  innumerable  preachers  and  theologians  ?  We 
divide  life  up  into  sections,  labelling  this  profane  and  that 
sacred,  but  Nature  makes  light  of  our  petty  discriminations, 
and  Truth  remains  one,  organic  and  ultimately  indivisible. 

We  have  now  only  to  deal  with  the  anomalies  qualifying  our 
recognition  of  the  fourth  or  ethico-religious  type  of  personality. 
As  I  have  already  implied,  this  type  of  individuality  is  funda- 
mental in  a  somewhat  different  sense  from  the  three  preceding 
ones.  It  synthetises  their  characteristics  into  the  unity  of  a 
higher  manifestation.  The  immediate  simplicity  of  the  objec- 
tive or  practical  nature  is  in  the  artist  withdrawn  from  exclusive 
relation  to  actualities,  and  comes  into  sensuous  or  intuitive 
touch  with  an  ideal  order.  This  ideal  order  the  artist  endeavours 
to  reproduce  by  the  manipulation  of  symbols.  Guided  by 
cosmic  emotion  in  the  first  place,  the  intellectual  man  takes  a 
further  step.  He  seeks  for  the  unchanging  law  underlying  the 
changing  features  of  actuality,  with  a  view  to  the  mastery  of 
fate.  The  ethico-religious  type  restores  to  unity  the  character- 
istics thus  differentiated — sharing  the  practical  aims  of  the  man 


40  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  action,  the  ideal  standard  of  the  artist,  and  the  stern  fidelity 
to  fact  of  the  man  of  science.  This  type  is  therefore  the  final 
term  of  a  logical  sequence,  and,  in  so  far  as  it  is  realised,  the 
ideal  has  become  the  actual.  It  may  be  objected  that  since  the 
inventor  has,  by  my  showing,  some  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
practical,  the  aesthetic,  and  the  intellectual  individuality,  he 
too  may  be  regarded  as  a  supreme  type.  But  the  inventor  is 
concerned  rather  with  the  means  than  the  ends  of  life  ;  he 
partakes  rather  of  the  constructive  than  the  creative  activity 
of  the  artist ;  he  is  not  philosophical  but  methodical,  not  in- 
tellectual but  acute. 

The  first  question  that  confronts  us  with  regard  to  my  re- 
presentatives of  the  ethico-religious  type  is  that  of  the  propriety 
of  including  the  personality  of  Jesus.  The  ultra-orthodox  will, 
of  course,  protest  against  it,  on  the  ground  that  Jesus  was  no 
mere  man,  and  ought  not  to  be  assigned  a  place  in  a  merely 
human  category.  Also,  they  will  regard  as  irreverent,  if  not 
blasphemous,  the  very  notion  of  an  attempt  at  dispassionate 
study  of  one  towards  whom  the  only  justifiable  attitude  is  that 
of  uncritical  adoration.  In  the  first  place,  I  shall  reply  that  if 
they  regard  Jesus  as  truly  Divine,  they  also  profess  to  regard 
him  as  truly  human,  and  have  no  right  to  object  to  investigation 
of  his  humanity.  In  the  second  place,  I  assert  that,  properly 
understood,  the  dispassionate  study  of  a  given  personality  is 
really  a  higher  and  more  worthy  tribute  than  the  adoption  of  an 
attitude  of  uncritical  adoration.  It  is,  at  any  rate,  far  more 
difficult,  and  the  results  are  like  to  be  of  more  permanent  value.1 
The  ultra-sceptical,  on  the  other  hand,  will  ridicule  the  inclusion 
of  what  they  consider  a  mythical  among  historical  personalities. 
To  them  I  shall  reply  that,  having  read  the  objections  of 
Robertson  and  others  to  the  historicity  of  Jesus,  I  cannot  admit 
for  a  moment  that  they  have  proved  their  case.  To  prove  a 
negative  is  proverbially  difficult,  and  this  is  no  exception  to  the 
rule.  This  much  they  have  certainly  done — they  have  de- 
monstrated the  extreme  slenderness  of  the  grounds  upon  which 

1  "  His  glory  does  not  consist  in  being  relegated  out  of  history,  we  render 
him  a  truer  worship  in  showing  that  all  history  is  incomprehensible  without 
him"  (Renan). 


CLASSIFICATION  41 

the  inference  in  favour  of  the  historicity  of  Jesus  really  rests. 
No  one  certainly  knows  whether  such  a  man  actually  lived  ; 
only  those  who  have  deeply  studied  the  evidence  have  any 
right  to  an  opinion  on  the  matter.  I,  for  my  part,  agree  with 
Schmiedel  (not  entirely  on  account  of  his  "  nine  pillars,"  l 
however)  and  with  Carpenter,  that  upon  the  whole  the  balance 
of  evidence  is  in  favour  of  the  affirmative  inference.  I  do  not 
presume  to  censure  those  who  think  otherwise.  But  my  main 
reasons  for  including  this  personality  are  :  first,  that  his  character, 
as  I  have,  after  much  thought  and  labour,  come  to  conceive 
of  it,  is  to  my  mind  supremely  interesting  and  significant ; 
secondly,  that  it  is  almost  the  only  available  example  of  a 
purely  ethical  type  ;  thirdly,  that  its  consideration  is  intimately 
bound  up  with  that  of  nearly  all  the  other  members  of  its  class, 
as  chosen,  without  preconception,  by  me.  It  seems  to  me 
impossible  to  discredit  the  substantial  genuineness  of  Paul's 
Epistles,  and,  in  a  less  degree,  of  the  Acts,  which  bring  us  into 
touch  with  blood  relations  and  intimate  associates  of  Jesus, 
and,  by  their  naive  revelation  of  the  feuds  and  dissensions  of 
the  primitive  Church,  render  the  hypothesis  of  wholesale  fraud 
futile  and  meaningless.  I  do  not,  on  the  other  hand,  regard  the 
Gospels,  not  even  that  of  Mark,  as  in  strict  sense  historical. 
They  were  fashioned  under  the  impulse  of  "  creative  love  and 
insight,"  moulded  by  the  preconceived  idea  of  the  Messianic 
role  of  their  hero  ;  but  there  is  a  central  core  of  historic  fact 
giving  verisimilitude  to  the  whole  story,  which  will,  I  believe, 
prove  indissoluble  by  the  corrosive  attack  of  the  most  deter- 
mined criticism.  "  What  is  indubitable,"  says  Renan,  "  is 
that  very  early  the  discourses  of  Jesus  were  written  in  the 
Aramean  language,  and  very  early  also  his  remarkable  actions 
were  recorded.  .  .  .  Who  does  not  see  the  value  of  documents 
thus  composed  by  the  tender  remembrances  and  simple  narra- 
tives of  the  first  two  Christian  generations,  still  full  of  the  strong 
impression  which  the  illustrious  founder  had  produced,  which 
seemed  long  to  survive  him  ?  " 

1  Jesus  in  Modern  Criticism,  by  Dr.  Paul  W.  Schmiedel,  trans,  by  M.  A. 
Canney.  For  Criticism,  see  "  The  Historicity  of  Jesus,"  by  J.  M.  Robertson, 
Agnostic  Annual,  1907. 


42  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

That  the  Gospels,  as  we  have  them,  were  amplified  by  the 
addition  of  orally-derived  mythical  elements,  is,  of  course, 
clear,  and  we  have  a  modern  example  of  the  rapidity  with  which 
a  mythos  can  be  elaborated  in  the  case  of  Bahaism,  the  new 
Persian  religion.  Startling  analogies  can  be  made  out,  for 
example,  between  the  Nativity  legend  of  Jesus  and  the  miracul- 
ous episodes  related  concerning  the  birth  and  childhood  of 
Gautama,  Krishna,  and  Confucius.  But  the  historicity  of  these 
persons  is  not  seriously  impugned. 

The  only  respect  in  which  the  personality  of  Jesus  fails  to 
be  typical  of  the  fourth  or  ethico-religious  category,  is  its 
intellectual  aspect.  In  capacity  his  mind  may  have  been 
of  a  very  high  order,  but  his  environment  negatived  the  possi- 
bility of  its  full  development.  The  dualistic  or  ascetic  tendency 
of  Christianity  is  the  result  not  so  much  of  the  direct  teaching 
of  its  founder,  who  was  at  heart  no  ascetic,  but  of  his  ignorance 
and  consequent  lack  of  appreciation  of  mundane  affairs.  We 
are  told  that  he  affirmed  the  unity,  or  at  least  the  affinity,  of 
man's  obligation  to  God  and  to  his  fellow-men.  But  the 
primitive,  almost  Utopian,  simplicity  of  his  Galilean  surround- 
ings rendered  him  permanently  antipathetic  to  the  complexity 
of  a  more  highly-organised  system  of  life.  Hence,  in  a  sort 
of  despair  of  understanding  it,  he  condemned  the  whole  business  : 
"  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world."  Unhappily  he  was 
taken  at  his  word  by  posterity,  and  untold  misery,  injustice, 
and  confusion  were  the  result. 

With  regard  to  the  Apostle  Paul,  not  much  need  be  added 
to  or  deducted  from  the  verdict  of  Kenan.  Paul,  he  affirms, 
was  no  saint,  was  not  pre-eminently  good.  He  is  assertive  of 
his  rights,  combative  on  occasion,  has  harsh  words  for  his 
opponents,  and  embroils  himself  in  unseemly  controversies.  He 
is,  in  measure,  a  man  of  action,  a  strong  soul,  impulsive,  zealous, 
ardent,  a  conqueror,  a  missionary,  a  propagandist,  all  the 
more  ardent  because  he  had  employed  his  fanaticism  in  a  contrary 
sense.  "  One  is  strong  in  action  by  his  faults,  one  is  weak  by 
his  virtues."  Granting  all  this,  even  perhaps  the  further 
charge  of  responsibility  for  the  principal  defects  of  Christian 
theology  (a  charge  warmly  disputed  by  Arnold),  I  must  still  insist 


CLASSIFICATION  43 

that  his  high  aim,  and  the  purely  spiritual  sphere  of  his  main 
activities,  render  it  impossible  to  assign  Paul  to  any  other 
than  the  ethico-religious  category.  The  case  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
is  the  exact  converse  of  that  of  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles. 
A  moralist,  nay,  a  saint,  by  temperament,  he  was  a  man  of 
action  by  the  necessity  of  his  imperial  position.  Guilt,  the 
nemesis  of  action,  surprised  him  in  the  person  of  his  noblest 
victim,  Blandina,  the  girl-martyr  of  Lyons.  It  is  the  one 
blot  on  his  escutcheon  that,  through  very  excess  of  scruple, 
and  over-anxious  fidelity  to  his  official  responsibilities,  he 
became,  in  his  own  despite,  a  persecutor.  Very  different 
is  the  case  of  Augustine,  an  artist  by  temperament,  if  there 
ever  were  one,  whose  claim  to  sanctity  rests  exclusively  on 
the  self-subdual  achieved  by  the  fierce  intensity  of  that  inner 
conflict  so  marvellously  depicted  in  the  deathless  pages  of 
his  Confessions.  The  psychological  interest  of  his  career 
abruptly  ceases  with  his  ultimate  conversion.  Gregory  the 
Great,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  never  to  have  known  one 
lawless  desire.  Like  Aurelius,  he  was  a  natural  recluse,  loyally, 
though  always  reluctantly,  and  with  wistful  backward  glances 
towards  the  forbidden  peace  of  his  monastery  on  the  Coelian, 
obeying  an  imperious  call  to  the  fulfilment  of  world-wide  respon- 
sibilities. Mahomet  and  Luther  are  two  striking  examples 
of  the  ethico-religious  type  blended  with  and  almost  dominated 
by  the  masterful  temper  of  the  man  of  action.  Yet  it  should 
be  remembered  that  the  first  did  not  make  appeal  to  the  sword 
before  he  had  reached  the  age  of  fifty-three,  when  "  thirteen 
years  of  meek  endurance  had  been  rewarded  by  nothing  but 
aggravated  injury  and  insult."  And  the  second,  when,  at 
almost  the  same  age,  he  declared  that  resistance  to  the  aggres- 
sion of  "  blood-thirsty  Papists  "  would  not  be  rebellion,  was 
for  the  moment  disillusioned  and  embittered  by  the  failure 
of  the  Emperor  to  maintain  at  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  that 
attitude  of  impartiality  which  Luther  had  rightly  expected 
of  him.  The  wonder  is,  not  that  men  of  such  power  and  energy 
to  some  extent  confused  might  with  right,  but  that  upon  the 
whole  their  lives  manifest  so  clear  a  recognition  of  the  differ- 
ence between  them.  In  Francis  d'Assisi  we  have  a  saint 


44  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  what  might  well  be  called  the  impulsive  or  "  lyric  "  order — a 
lovely  personality ;  yet  the  purity  of  his  exaltation  must  not 
blind  us  to  the  hopelessly  impracticable  and  in  great  part 
mischievous  tendency  of  his  aims.  To  all  intellectual  interests 
Francis  was  not  merely  indifferent,  but  actively  hostile  :  "  God 
will  confound  you  through  your  knowledge  and  your  wisdom." 
He  was,  in  fact,  an  obscurantist  :  if  you  want  to  know  which 
road  to  take,  turn  round  and  round  until  you  are  dizzy,  and 
the  direction  in  which  you  fall  is  that  of  your  God-revealed 
route.  If  you  wish  to  convert  a  foreign  country,  go  there 
without  troubling  to  learn  the  language  in  which  you  will  have 
to  preach.  But  for  single-hearted  devotion  to  the  highest, 
as  he  too  austerely  conceived  it,  Francis  has  never  been  excelled 
and  hardly  equalled.  Hence  the  exalted  place  he  must  ever 
hold  among  representatives  of  the  ethico -religious  category. 
It  only  remains  to  speak  of  my  two  modern  exemplars  of  the 
supreme  type — Emerson  and  Kenan.  As  to  the  first,  probably 
no  one  will  seriously  dispute  the  appropriateness  of  the  classi- 
fication, but  many  may  demur  to  my  estimate  of  his  import- 
ance in  the  class  to  which  he  belongs.  Emerson  is  great  as 
a  poet,  great  as  an  artist  in  prose,  great  as  an  unsystematic 
philosopher,  but  greatest  of  all  as  a  man.  His  intellectual 
and  moral  influence,  both  distinctively  as  an  emancipator  from 
obsolete  shibboleths  and  constructively  as  a  prophet  and 
pioneer,  can  hardly  be  over- appraised.  There  is  not  in  him, 
as  undoubtedly  in  Whitman,  a  histrionic  element,  a  taint  of  pose 
and  pseudo-Bohemianism.  His  good  sense  was  the  outcome 
of  his  profound  sincerity,  and  proves,  what  our  demagogues 
and  Jacobins  are  so  slow  (to  their  cost)  in  learning,  that  respect- 
ability deserves,  and,  in  the  long-run,  will  command,  respect. 
Kenan's  case  is  far  more  complex,  and,  in  some  ways,  dubious  ; 
but,  since  the  ultimate  problems  of  life  and  religion  were  his 
lifelong  sphere  of  research  and  teaching,  he  can  hardly  be 
denied  a  place  in  the  ethico-religious  class.  And  if  the  Church 
denied  him,  he  never  denied  the  Church,  but  almost  with  his 
last  breath  deplored  his  exclusion  from  it,  proudly  claiming 
the  title  of  a  conservator  of  its  essential  truths.  He  was,  both 
by  his  defects  and  qualities,  more  distinctively  modern  than 


CLASSIFICATION  45 

Emerson,  who  has,  after  all,  something  staid  and  academic 
in  his  attitude  towards  life.  In  his  private  life  Renan  was  more 
than  blameless,  was,  indeed,  a  hero  and  a  saint.  The  beauty 
and  distinction  of  his  style  were  the  outcome  of  unflinching 
fidelity  to  his  individual  convictions  and  ideals,  chastened 
by  the  subtlest  discriminations  and  the  tenderest  regard  for 
his  opponents'  point  of  view. 

Such,  then,  are  the  principal  qualifications  affecting  the 
distribution  of  our  typical  personalities  into  four  main  groups. 
I  have  dealt  with  them  at  considerable  length,  but  by  so  doing 
have  been  able  to  bring  the  reader  into  touch  with  what  might 
be  called  the  keynote  or  leading  motive  of  each  career,  and 
this  will,  I  hope,  facilitate  the  task  of  more  detailed  investiga- 
tion. It  has,  I  think,  been  made  abundantly  clear  that  any 
clean-cut  division  of  human  individualities  into  separate  classes 
is  really  impracticable,  and  that,  though  the  attempt  is  justifi- 
able, and  even  necessary,  on  the  ground  of  convenience,  the 
overlapping  of  the  several  groups  is  a  fact  to  be  kept  constantly 
in  mind.  All  that  we  can  truthfully  assert  is,  that  in  this  or 
the  other  personality,  such  or  such  qualities — practical,  aesthetic, 
intellectual,  or  ethical — predominate.  The  others — too — will  in 
greater  or  less  degree  be  represented,  either  as  undeveloped 
potentialities,  or  as  actively-modifying  and  complicating 
influences. 


Ill 

FAMILY  HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  AND  CONSTITUTION 

Size  of  paternal  family — Place  in  family — Longevity — Relation  of  paternal 
and  maternal  factors — Examples — Maternal  insanity — Tuberculosis, 
etc. — Sterility  of  genius — Summary. 

ALTHOUGH  we  are  concerned  in  the  present  work  not  primarily 
with  the  physical  but  the  mental  characteristics  of  great  men, 
it  is  impossible  to  pass  over  in  silence  those  prominent  facts  of 
heredity  and  constitutional  proclivity  which  have  an  obvious 
bearing  on  our  subject.  A  long  course  of  biographical  reading 
has,  however,  strongly  impressed  upon  me  the  deficiencies  of 
the  average  litterateur  in  respect  of  scientific  acumen.  Just 
those  things  which  one  wants  most  to  know  are  those  which  he 
commonly  ignores  or  slurs  over.  In  his  remarks  on  parentage 
and  family  history,  he,  as  a  rule,  confines  himself  to  a  cursory 
account  of  the  paternal  stock.  The  at  least  equally  important 
maternal  element  is  nearly  always  dismissed  in  a  few  lines  of 
vague  unimportant  gossip.  There  are  honourable  exceptions ; 
but  this  is  the  rule,  and  it  is  deplorable.  Biography  should  be 
regarded  as  primarily  scientific  rather  than  aesthetic  in  aim  ; 
and  although  there  is  really  no  incompatibility  between  the 
two  ideals,  the  former  should  here  have  precedence  wherever 
their  claims  appear  to  be  at  variance. 

The  parents  of  great  men,  taken  collectively,  are  not  very 
prolific.  Excluding  two  or  three  of  my  forty  instances,  with 
reference  to  the  size  of  whose  parents'  families  my  information 
is  too  vague  or  dubious,  I  find  that  the  average  number  of 
brothers  or  sisters,  or  both  (including  my  representative  men), 
is  4'9.  And,  curiously  enough,  there  seems  to  be  a  gradual 

diminution  in  the  size  of  the  families  as  we  proceed  from  the 

46 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       47 

first  or  most  primitive  group  (men  of  action)  to  the  last  or 
ethico-religious.  The  numbers  are  as  follows  : l  Men  of  action 
— average  number,  7'9  ;  aesthetic  type,  4'3  ;  intellectual  type, 
4'2  ;  ethico-religious  type,  3-2.  The  average  of  the  last  group 
is  based  in  part  on  the  assumption  that  Jesus  had  four  brothers 
and  two  sisters,  and  Paul  one  brother  and  sister.2  If  we  exclude 
these  doubtful  instances,  the  average  will  be  somewhat  lower. 
It  is  interesting  to  notice  the  large  proportion  of  great  men  who 
have  been  only  children — particularly  in  the  last  group.  Dante, 
Turner,  Newton  (his  mother,  however,  had  children  by  a  second 
husband),  Leibnitz  (only  son  by  father's  third  wife),  Marcus 
Aurelius  (so  far  as  I  am  aware),  Augustine,  Gregory,  Mahomet 
— just  one  fifth  of  the  whole — were  the  only  children  of  their 
two  parents.  Leonardo  I  exclude,  for  he  was  illegitimate. 
His  mother,  a  peasant  girl,  married,  and  may  have  had  a  large 
family.  His  father  had  subsequently  no  less  than  four  wives, 
and  some  children.  With  regard  to  the  question  whether  great 
men  come  early  or  late  in  their  respective  families,  the  evidence 
clearly  points  in  the  former  direction.  The  average  place  in  a 
family  averaging  a  number  of  eight  is  for  my  men  of  action,  2'2  ; 
for  the  aesthetic  type,  1*7  in  a  family  of  average  number,  4-3  ; 
for  the  intellectuals,  1*9  in  4*2  ;  and  for  the  last  group,  1*4  in 
families  averaging  3'2.  For  the  four  groups  taken  together, 
the  average  place  is  T8  in  4'9.  That  is  to  say,  that  the  families 
into  which  are  born  great  men,  in  general  appear  to  average 
nearly  five  members,  and  that  the  chances  are  somewhat  less 
of  the  great  man  being  the  eldest  than  the  second-born.  Another 
point  of  some  slight  interest  is  the  fact  that  of  my  ten  intellectuals, 
Bacon  and  Spinoza  were  the  offspring  of  their  father's  second, 
and  Leibnitz  was  the  son  of  his  father's  third  wife.  This 
perhaps  might  indicate  that  a  considerable  seniority  on  the 
part  of  the  husband  to  the  wife  is  a  condition  favouring  intel- 
lectual eminence  in  the  offspring.  That  the  average  size  of 

1  Where  one  or  both  parents  have  been  married  more  than  once  I  have 
counted  only  the  mother's  children,  as  I  consider  the  maternal  element  the 
better  test  of  prolificity  in  a  given  stock.  The  mother  of  William  the  Silent 
had  17  children,  5  being  by  a  former  husband. 

s  Kenan's  estimate. 


48  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  family  should  gradually  diminish  as  we  pass  from  what  I 
consider  the  most  primitive  to  the  most  advanced  type,  is,  as 
far  as  it  goes,  confirmatory  of  the  genuineness  of  my  principle 
of  classification.  To  be  fair,  it  must  be  owned  that  the  two 
intermediate  groups  (aesthetic  and  intellectual)  are  practically 
equal  in  this  respect  (4'3  and  4'2),  but  on  my  own  showing 
the  distinction  between  these  is  not  organically  well  marked  or 
abrupt,  but  graduated  by  mutual  affinities.  Let  us  now  apply 
the  test  of  relative  longevity,  and  we  shall  find  that  it  points 
in  much  the  same  direction.  Excluding,  of  course,  those  indi- 
viduals (Caesar,  William  the  Silent,  Nelson,  Lincoln)  who  died 
by  violence,  the  average  longevity  of  my  great  men,  taken 
conjointly,  is  65' 7  years.  For  the  separate  groups,  the  average 
longevities  are:  men  of  action,  61 '1  ;  aesthetic  type,  66' 1  ; 
intellectuals,  69  ;  ethical  type,  64*7.  It  would  appear  that 
men  of  action  are  the  most  short-lived,  that  there  is  a  consider- 
able rise  when  we  come  to  the  poets  and  artists,  a  distinct 
further  rise  to  a  maximum  duration  among  philosophers  and 
men  of  science,  and  a  definite  fall  towards  the  minimum  with 
members  of  the  last  group.  Assuming — it  is  a  bold  assumption, 
perhaps — that  results  based  on  so  few  examples  can  be  trusted, 
what  is  their  most  natural  interpretation  ?  My  standard  is  a 
very  high  one  ;  large  numbers  are  not  available  ;  for  men  like 
Caesar,  Newton,  Dante,  and  Gregory  do  not  grow  on  every  bush. 
It  is,  at  all  events,  clear  that  men  of  the  highest  orders  of  great- 
ness are,  as  a  whole,  distinctly  long-lived.  The  reason  probably 
is  that  a  man  who  starts  with  a  good  stock  of  "  vitality  "  is, 
other  things  being  equal,  more  likely  to  distinguish  himself 
than  one  who  is  not  so  equipped.  And,  obviously,  he  will  be 
likely  to  live  longer  too.  As  regards  the  higher  average  longevity 
of  those  engaged  in  abstract  (aesthetic  and  intellectual)  rather 
than  concrete  spheres  of  activity,  or  those  pointing  in  that 
direction,  the  most  probable  explanation  is  that  the  physical 
organism  encounters  more  severe  obstacles  and  undergoes  more 
wear  and  tear  in  the  latter  than  in  the  former  cases.  The 
supremacy  of  the  intellectuals  in  respect  of  longevity,  with 
their  very  high  average  of  sixty-nine  years,  seems  to  support  the 
popular  belief  in  the  positively  conservative  effect  upon  the 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION      49 

physical  organism  of  great  mental  effort.1  And  this  is  confirmed 
by  the  fact  that,  of  the  members  of  my  last  (ethico-religious) 
group,  the  three  most  distinctly  intellectual  men — Augustine, 
Emerson,  and  Renan — were  by  far  the  longest  lived.  Augustine 
lived  to  be  seventy-six,  Emerson  to  be  seventy-nine,  and  Renan 
to  be  sixty-nine.  Luther,  who  died  at  sixty-three,  lived,  in  many 
respects,  the  life  of  a  man  of  action.  Francis  d'Assisi,  who  can 
hardly  be  called  a  thinker,  died  at  forty-five.  This  last  group 
is,  in  fact,  far  less  homogeneous  than  the  others  ;  and  general 
conclusions  with  regard  to  it  are  correspondingly  precarious. 

We  will  now  consider  such  facts  with  regard  to  the  parentage 
of  particular  individuals  as  appear  likely  to  throw  light  upon 
the  main  problems  with  which  we  are  concerned.  Of  Caesar's 
lineage,  it  is  noteworthy  that  for  eight  generations  his  fore- 
fathers had  held  prominent  positions  in  the  State.  Nature 
had  been  slowly  working  up  towards  the  production  of  the 
greatest  ruler  of  men  that  the  world  has  yet  seen.  In  politics 
they  had  been  moderate  aristocrats,  and  although  Caesar,  led 
by  clear-sighted  ambition,  inevitably  adopted  the  democratic 
policy  of  Marius,  his  uncle  by  marriage,  traces  of  the  inherited 
moderation  and  conservatism  of  his  nature  are  clearly  evidenced 
by  his  public  actions  throughout  b'fe.  He  loathed  vulgar  display, 
and  had  an  unerring  instinct  of  good  taste,  so  fastidious  that  it 
almost  ranks  as  a  moral  rather  than  a  merely-aesthetic  trait.  Of 
his  father,  who  had  been  praator,  nothing  more  need  be  said. 
Of  his  mother,  Aurelia,  we  read  that  she  was  a  strict  and  stately 
lady  of  the  old  school,  uninfected  by  the  cosmopolitan  laxity 
of  her  day.  Consequently,  though  the  Caesars  were  wealthy, 
the  habits  of  Aurelia's  household  were  simple  and  severe. 
Caesar  was  always  passionately  devoted  to  his  mother,  who 
shared  his  house  up  to  the  time  of  her  death,  when  Caesar  was 
forty-six  years  old.  Her  influence  upon  him  was  doubtless 
great  and  beneficial.  Precisely  the  same  can  be  said  as  to 
Charlemagne,  whose  private  life  at  anyrate  grossly  deteriorated 
from  the  date  of  his  mother's  death  in  his  own  forty-second 

1  The  trophic  influence  of  mental  activity  is  negatively  indicated  by  the 
extreme  liability  of  the  insane  to  fractures,  bruises,  and  other  traumatic  or 
inflammatory  lesions. 

4 


50  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

year.  Bertha  was,  like  Amelia,  a  matron  of  the  old  school, 
strongly  opposed  to  the  Romanising  tendencies  of  the  West 
Franks  of  Aquitaine  and  Neustria.  It  was  doubtless  in  great 
measure  due  to  her  that  Charles  remained  faithful  to  the 
traditional  dress  and  the  hardy  customs  of  his  Frankish  fore- 
fathers. On  the  paternal  side  Charlemagne  came  of  a  race 
whose  growing  instinct  for  power  and  sovereignty  is  evident 
enough.  His  great-grandfather  and  grandfather  had  been 
mayors  only  of  the  royal  palace  by  title,  but  in  actuality  the 
true  rulers  of  Austrasia,  the  Merovingian  kings,  whom  they 
found  it  convenient  for  the  present  to  uphold  in  formal  sway, 
having  become  the  merest  puppets  in  their  hands.  The  gradual 
process  of  usurpation  was  completed  by  Charlemagne's  father, 
Pepin  the  Short,  who  in  750  (when  Charles  was  eight  years  old) 
supplanted  Childeric  in.  and  assumed  the  royal  title.  He 
made  good  use  of  it  too,  but  in  the  light  of  history  his  achiev- 
ments  have  a  tentative  or  preparatory  aspect  beside  those  of 
his  greater  son.  For,  though  a  man  of  real  force  and  originality, 
Pepin  somehow  lacked  that  personal  magnetism,  that  inexplic- 
able assurance  of  authority,  which  marks  the  born  leader  of 
men.  "  The  Franks,  we  are  told,"  says  his  son's  biographer,1 
"  followed  Pepin  across  the  snow-clad  Alps,  but  did  so  with 
doubts  and  murmurings."  The  statement  is  decisive,  as 
against  the  claim  of  Pepin  to  military  genius.  The  fact  that 
great  men  often  win  their  supreme  distinction  in  the  same 
sphere  as  that  which  was  invaded  with  some  success  by  their 
fathers  and  forefathers,  must  not  blind  us  to  the  other  fact  that 
the  difference  between  their  performances  in  this  given  sphere 
is  one  of  kind,  not  of  degree.  It  is  talent  rather  than  genius, 
character  rather  than  temperament,  that  repeats  itself  in  father 
and  son.  The  transforming  increment  of  power  and  insight, 
whatever  its  ultimate,  possibly  transcendent  origin,  has, 
genetically-speaking,  commonly  a  maternal,  or  at  least  a 
feminine,  source.  So  it  was  with  Cromwell,  whose  mother, 
Elizabeth  Steward,  must  have  been  a  remarkable  woman.  She 
was  thirty-four  at  least  when  Oliver,  her  fifth  child,  was  born  ; 
forty-five  when  she  bore  her  eleventh.  Her  portrait  shows  a 

1  H.  Carlcss  Davis. 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       51 

striking  resemblance  to  the  great  Protector,  the  face  being 
"  strong,  homely,  keen,  with  firm  mouth  and  penetrating  eyes, 
a  womanly  goodness  and  peacefulness  of  expression."  Of  the 
precise  part  played  by  her  in  guiding  the  career  of  Oliver  we  do 
not  know  much,  but  we  know  that  he  thought  more  of  her  than 
of  any  other  woman,  more  than  of  his  wife.  She  survived  her 
husband  thirty-seven  years,  remaining  throughout  life — to  her 
ninetieth  year — by  Oliver's  side;  was  lodged  by  him  in  Whitehall 
Palace,  and  royally  interred  in  the  Abbey.  Of  Cromwell's 
father  we  read  that  he  was  a  man  of  good  sense,  of  competent 
learning  and  great  spirit,  but  unambitious,  methodical,  reserved, 
and  proud.  The  Cromwells  were  a  sound  stock,  by  wealth 
and  alliances  in  the  front  rank  of  untitled  gentry,  prolific  and 
long-lived.  For  generations  they  had  been  conspicuous  for 
loyalty,  chivalry,  and  public  spirit,  some  tending  to  Puritan 
austerity,  others  to  the  opposite  extreme.  Precisely  analogous 
is  the  case  of  William  the  Silent,  whose  father,  William,  Count 
of  Nassau,  the  heir  of  a  House  which  had  produced  many 
chiefs  illustrious  in  war  and  council,  is  himself  described  as  a 
"  pale,  dull,  local  type."  His  wife,  the  hero's  mother,  was  in 
all  ways  an  exceptional  woman.  She  bore  seventeen  children 
in  all,  five  by  a  previous  husband.  Strong,  devout,  affectionate, 
a  sincere  but  temperate  Protestant,  she  endured  a  long  life 
of  calamity  and  bereavement  with  heroic  serenity  and  courage, 
dying  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven. 

That  Napoleon  thought  highly  of  his  mother  we  know  from 
the  fact  that  he  attributed  his  elevation  to  her  training,  laying 
down  the  maxim  that  the  future  good  or  bad  conduct  of  a 
child  depends  entirely  on  the  mother.  On  the  eve  of  his  de- 
parture from  Elba,  it  was  to  her,  and  her  alone  of  those  he  left 
behind  him,  that  the  secret  of  his  desperate  venture  was  confided. 
From  her  he  is  thought  to  have  inherited  his  astounding 
energy,  as  his  disposition  did  not  resemble  that  of  his  father, 
a  somewhat  indolent  Italian  gentleman  of  literary  tastes. 
Both  father  and  son,  however,  died  of  cancer  of  the  stomach. 
The  predominance  of  the  maternal  element  as  a  determinant 
of  genius  is  further  shown  in  the  cases  of  Mozart,  Goethe,  Scott, 
Leibnitz,  Augustine,  Gregory,  Francis  d'Assisi — to  mention 


52  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

only  the  most  salient  instances.  The  fathers  of  these  men 
were  in  most  cases  worthy  citizens  (Augustine's  was,  however, 
an  unprincipled  scamp),  but  quite  lacking  in  point  of  distinction. 
They  supply,  as  it  were,  the  general  or  special  form  of  capacity 
which  is  vitalised  by  the  temperamental  endowment  derived 
from  the  mothers.  Thus  Mozart's  father  had  an  innate  love 
of  music  and  skill  as  a  violinist,  which  led  to  his  desertion  of  the 
study  of  law  and  acquisition  of  the  post  of  director  of  the  Prince 
Archbishop's  orchestra  at  Salzburg.  He  was  an  industrious 
composer  of  works  long  forgotten,  but  his  chef  d'ceuvre  was  a 
Violin  Instructor,  which  achieved  a  considerable  popularity. 
Obviously  a  man  of  talent,  a  man  of  genuine  and  specialised 
ability — but  obviously  nothing  more.  It  was  the  light-hearted, 
easy,  warm,  and  affectionate  nature  of  Anna  Maria  Pertl  that 
conferred  upon  her  son  that  "  kiss  of  the  fairies  "  which  her 
husband  in  his  own  cradle  had  lacked.  Of  her  seven  children, 
the  five  youngest  died  in  infancy.  Mozart  himself  seems  to 
have  suffered  from  some  undiagnosed  pyrexial  condition, 
probably  tubercular,  and  to  have  died  of  tubercular  nephritis. 
I  call  attention  to  this  fact,  being  decidedly  of  opinion  that  a 
tubercular  or  strumous  taint  is  in  some  ill-understood  way  a 
favouring  condition  of  certain  types  of  aesthetic  and  intellectual 
capacity.  The  cases  of  Goethe  and  Scott  were  in  respect  of 
parentage  so  curiously  similar  that  they  might  almost  be  described 
together.  Both  were  the  sons  of  lawyers,  both  were  designed 
to  follow  the  same  profession  (of  law),  both  derived  much  from 
their  fathers,  but  the  love  of  poetry  and  romance  from  their 
mothers.  Goethe  says  of  himself  that  he  inherited  his  powerful 
frame  of  body  and  the  earnest  conduct  of  life  from  his  father ; 
his  joyous  temperament  and  fondness  for  story-telling  from 
his  mother ;  his  devotion  to  the  fair  sex  from  a  great-grandfather ; 
and  the  love  of  finery  and  gew-gaws  from  a  great-grandmother. 
He  does  not  mention  the  curious  fact  that  there  are  three 
tailors x  to  be  found  among  his  ancestry,  one  being  his  grand- 
father— for  the  Goethes  were  nouveaux  riches.  It  is  worth 
noticing  that  Goethe's  father  was  thirty-nine,  and  his  mother, 
the  bright,  imaginative,  and  sentimental  correspondent  (later) 

1  AB  bearing  on  what  might  be  called  his  decided  "  feeling  for  clothes." 


WILLIAM    TIIK    SILENT. 
From  an  fngrai'ing. 


Toface  f>.  52. 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       53 

of  many  eminent  persons,  only  eighteen,  at  the  time  of  his  birth. 
Pace  Weismann,  this  may  be  in  some  way  related  to  the  com- 
plexities and  inconsistencies  of  his  character.     The  paternal 
and  maternal  elements  within  him  had  a  long  and  stubborn 
contest  before  any  tolerable  modus  vivendi  could  be  thrashed 
out  between  them.     The  father  of  Leibnitz  was  an  eminent 
jurist  and  professor    of    moral  philosophy,  born  of   a  good 
Protestant   family.     Leibnitz   inherited   from   him    the    same 
intellectual  interests,  coloured  and  vivified  by  the  temperament 
of  his  third  wife,  the  great  philosopher's  mother.     She  was 
a  woman  who  overcame  all  personal  difficulties  with  patience, 
trying  to  live  with  everyone  in  peace  and  quiet.     "  This  con- 
ciliatory spirit  showed  itself  in  her  son's  celebrated  attempts 
to  bring  about  political  and  religious  union,  and  has  found  its 
classical    expression   in   his    philosophical    system."    Leibnitz 
remained  a  Protestant,  but  it  was  the  dream  of  his  life  to  see 
unity  and  universality  restored  to  the  Church  of  Christendom. 
His  negotiations  with  political  and  ecclesiastical  rulers  on  behalf 
of  religious  unity  extend  over  some  thirty-two  years.     The  same 
hereditary  disposition  to  avoid  a  one-sided  attitude  is  evinced 
by  his  refusal  to  join  in  the  depreciation  of  ancient  philosophy 
(Aristotle's  in  particular),  so  fashionable  among  the  thinkers 
of  his  day.    Himself  in  the  vanguard  of  progress,  "  he  blames 
the  moderns  for  being  more  anxious  to  propound  their  own 
ideas  than  to  bring  out  what  was  great  and  true  in  Aristotle 
and  the  schoolmen."     He  maintains — and  as  to  the  justice 
of  the  contention  there  can  hardly  be  two  opinions — that  much 
of  what  was  thought  to  be  new  is  to  be  found  in  the  older  writers. 
This  catholicity  was  perhaps  the  innermost  factor  of  Leibnitz' 
greatness  ;  and  he  had  it  direct  from  his  mother,  though  in 
her  it  was  merely  a  domestic  and  moral,  not  an  intellectual 
characteristic. 

It  can  scarcely  be  necessary  to  call  attention  to  the  pre- 
dominance of  the  maternal  element  in  the  ultimate  determina- 
tion of  the  genius  of  Augustine.  What  is  most  interesting  in 
his  case  is  the  evidence  afforded  by  his  writings  of  a  long  and 
arduous  contest  between  the  sensual  and  lawless  proclivities 
which  he  inherited  from  his  worthless  father,  resulting  in  freaks 


54  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and  vagaries  which  appear  to  have  been  an  actual  source  of 
satisfaction  to  that  irresponsible  gentleman,  and  the  latent  but 
slowly-emerging  endowment,  culminating  at  last  in  a  spirit  of 
pitiless  introspective  self -scrutiny  and  austere  self-discipline, 
which  he  doubtless  inherited  from  the  saintly  Monica.  Of  her 
we  read  that,  having  in  childhood  been  sent  many  times  to 
draw  wine  for  the  household,  she  inadvertently  acquired  a 
precocious  passion  for  wine-bibbing.  The  reproach  of  a  servant 
opened  her  eyes  to  the  enormity  of  her  offence,  and  she  at  once 
resolved  to  abandon  the  vice.  It  was  at  about  the  same  time 
that  she  began  to  manifest  that  spirit  of  deep  and  passionate 
devotion  which  henceforth  was  the  ruling  principle  of  her  life. 
She  married  very  young,  and  was  often  beaten  by  her  husband, 
who  was  also  a  drunkard  and  a  profligate,  but  seems  not  to  have 
been  devoid  of  affection,  and  ultimately  became  a  Christian. 
Monica  was  the  subject  of  many  visions.  Once,  for  example, 
at  a  time  when  she  had  almost  despaired  of  her  son's  conversion 
from  the  Manichean  heresy  to  Catholic  orthodoxy,  "  a  shining 
one  "  showed  her  Augustine  standing  with  her  "  in  the  same 
rule."  Augustine  objected  to  her  interpretation,  and  said  that 
the  vision  showed  that  she  need  not  despair  of  being  one  day 
what  he  was.  He  was  deeply  impressed  by  her  reply  that  it 
had  not  been  said  by  the  angel,  "  Where  he,  there  thou  also  ;  but 
where  thou,  there  he  also."  And  I  think  the  shrewdness  of 
this  retort  fairly  justifies  the  inference  that  Augustine  owed  to 
his  mother  not  only  the  fundamental  seriousness  and  sincerity 
of  his  nature,  but  much  too  of  that  dialectical  subtlety  which 
has  excited  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  countless  readers 
of  his  Confessions.  Yet  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  without 
the  antinomian  tendencies  which  he  got  from  Patricius,  the  com- 
plex personality  of  Augiistine  would  have  lacked  an  essential 
ingredient  of  its  perennial  interest  and  significance.  If  he  had 
not  lied  and  robbed  orchards  in  his  boyhood,  if  in  his  youth  he 
had  not  indulged  in  lawless  loves,  if  he  had  escaped  the  bondage 
of  that  Manichean  heresy,  whose  chains,  while  they  galled  him, 
he  yet  so  long  was  unable  to  break,  Augustine's  Confessions 
would  have  lacked  the  intense  dramatic  appeal  which  constitutes 
their  unique  value  as  a  psychological  document.  In  striking 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       55 

contrast  with  the  case  of  Augustine  is  that  of  Gregory  the  Great, 
whose  sanctity  belongs  to  a  type  of  comparative  unity  and 
simplicity.  His  father,  Gordianus,  was  a  wealthy  and  influential 
member  of  the  Anicii  (a  family  noted  in  history),  and  lived  in  a 
palace  on  the  Coelian,  subsequently  converted  by  Gregory  into 
a  monastery,  where  his  happiest  days  were  spent.  Two  sisters 
of  Gordianus  were  noted  for  the  sanctity  of  their  lives,  and  their 
father  had  sat  in  the  chair  of  Peter.  Gregory's  mother,  Sylvia, 
who  was  also  reckoned  a  saint,  is  described  as  "  blending  the 
noble  qualities  of  the  typical  Roman  matron  with  the  higher 
discipline  of  Christian  virtues."  On  her  husband's  death  Sylvia 
retired  to  the  Cella  Nuova  and  devoted  herself  to  prayer  and 
asceticism.  Reading  between  the  lines  of  this  family  history, 
it  is  easy  to  understand  how  the  son  of  Gordianus  and  Sylvia 
seems  from  the  first  to  have  had  no  dearer  wish  than  to  devote 
himself  to  a  life  of  contemplative  religious  fervour.  His  mind, 
we  are  told,  matured  early;  he  was  venerated  by  all  his  associates, 
and  in  Rome  was  deemed  second  to  none.  Few  lives  are  more 
devoid  of  evidence  of  any  period  of  struggle  for  self-mastery, 
of  any  hesitation  as  to  the  objects  to  be  deemed  supremely 
worthy  of  attainment.  Gregory  would  gladly  have  lived  and 
died  an  obscure  monk  ;  he  was  always  a  monk  at  heart.  But 
those  who  knew  him  better  perhaps  than  he  knew  himself, 
recognised  in  him  the  inborn  capacity  of  a  genuine  ruler  of  men. 
Their  wish  prevailed,  and  Gregory  became  the  supreme  ecclesi- 
astical statesman  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Unmistakable  is 
the  predominance  of  maternal  traits  in  the  genius  of  that  saintly 
Bohemian,  Francis  d' Assisi,  of  whom  with  pardonable  enthusiasm 
it  has  been  said  that  he  was  in  certain  respects  "  well-nigh 
another  Christ  given  to  the  world."  Of  his  father,  Pier  Ber- 
nardone,  a  travelling  silk  and  cloth  merchant,  one  thinks  as  a 
typical  bourgeois  personality,  not  perhaps  devoid  of  culture,  for 
in  those  days  such  men  were  the  trusted  agents  and  messengers 
of  princes  and  legates,  but  obviously  incapable  of  understanding, 
still  more  of  sympathising  with,  what  he  must  have  deemed  the 
high-flown  visions  and  impracticable  aspirations^of  his  1  eldest 
sou.  His  wife,  Madonna  Pica,  was  a  Proven£al  lady,  probably 
of  more  exalted  rank  than  her  husband,  by  whom  she  was  wooed 


56  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

in  one  of  his  mercantile  tours  in  South  France.  From  her 
Francis  inherited  his  delicate  body,  gracious  nature,  courteous 
manners,  intuitive  reverence,  and  that  dainty  fastidiousness  as 
to  dress,  food,  and  person,  which  it  cost  him  grievous  pains  to 
overcome.  His  love  of  cleanliness  was,  we  are  told,  a  lifelong 
trait,  but  it  must,  through  the  rigour  of  his  life  of  voluntary 
mendicancy,  have  suffered  many  a  rude  rebuff.  In  fact,  we  are 
expressly  informed  that  it  was  at  first  very  hard  for  him  to 
conquer  his  loathing  for  the  scraps  and  leavings  of  food  procured 
by  begging — him  who  had  ever  shrunk  from  animal  foods  and 
messes,  loving  sweetmeats,  cakes,  and  all  delicate  dishes.  To  a 
strain  of  gentle  birth  his  biographer  attributes  his  preference 
for  the  beautiful  and  romantic,  to  which  we  may  perhaps  add 
that  fastidious  vanity  which  in  his  early  youth  made  him  delight 
to  adorn  his  slim  person,  "  investing  it  in  mantles  of  beautiful 
texture  and  colour,  and  loving  the  sheen  and  flash  of  jewelled 
clasp  and  brooch."  Of  his  mother's  devoutness  there  can  be 
no  question  ;  she  prayed  for  him  without  ceasing,  and  openly 
expressed  a  hope  that,  if  it  pleased  God,  he  might  become  a 
good  Christian. 

I  have  next  to  call  attention  to  the  significant  fact  that,  of 
our  forty  individuals,  three  (Bacon,  Turner,  and  Lincoln)  were 
born  of  mothers  who  were  mentally 1  unsound.  Bacon's  mother 
was  a  most  accomplished  woman,  a  genuine  scholar,  affectionate, 
devout,  of  a  markedly  suspicious  temperament,  and  showed 
leanings  to  religious  dissent.  She  became  insane  towards  the 
end  of  her  life.  That  Bacon  had  a  high  regard  for  her  is 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  he  expressed  a  wish  to  be  buried  by 
her  side.  His  father,  a  genial,  impulsive  soul,  generous  and 
jocose,  may  have  been  a  lovable  person,  but  was  not  a  great 
lawyer.  Here,  again,  the  maternal  inheritance  is  evidently  a 
predominant  factor.  Turner's  mother  was  a  woman  of  ungovern- 
able temper,  who  also  became  insane.  His  father  was  a  garrulous, 
miserly  little  hairdresser  of  Devonshire  extraction,  and  though 
the  great  artist  certainly  resembled  him  in  appearance  and 
inherited  his  penurious  disposition,  I  suspect  that  his  artistic 

1  Emotionally  unstable,  in  the  first  place,  however,  not  of  course  intellec- 
tually deficient. 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       57 

bias  was  derived  from  the  maternal  side.  Lincoln's  mother, 
Nancy  Hanks,  a  tall  and  beautiful  brunette,  though  never 
actually  insane,  suffered  from  habitual  depression,  almost 
amounting  to  melancholia,  as,  of  course,  did  her  son  Abraham. 
In  his  case,  the  morbid  inheritance  was  clearly  manifested  by 
something  very  like  an  attack  of  mental  alienation,  for  after 
the  death  of  a  girl  whom  he  had  loved,  he  became  at  the  age  of 
twenty-four  for  some  weeks  "  nearly  insane,"  lost  his  youth, 
became  subject  to  frequent  attacks  of  intense  depression,  and 
was  finally  the  subject  of  a  settled  melancholy  which  never 
left  him.  Yet  his  mother,  though  uneducated,  was  acknowledged 
to  be  a  woman  of  exceptional  understanding.  Lincoln's  father 
was  an  idle,  thriftless  ne'er-do-well,  a  man  of  immense  physical 
strength  (which  Abraham  certainly  inherited)  and  an  inveterate 
anecdotist.  He  was  always  in  debt  and  difficulty,  and  must 
have  been  something  of  a  brute,  since  he  has  been  seen  to  knock 
his  little  son  headlong  from  a  fence  while  civilly  answering  a 
traveller's  question.  Advocates  of  the  policy  of  prohibiting 
marriage  or  child-birth  to  persons  predisposed  to  insanity, 
should  not  overlook  the  fact  that  one  of  the  greatest  philosophers, 
one  of  the  greatest  painters,  one  of  the  greatest  statesmen,  that 
the  world  has  produced,  were  each  the  son  of  a  mother  pre- 
disposed to  insanity,  two  of  the  three  women  being  destined  to 
become  actually  insane.  Such  questions,  however  important, 
are  by  no  means  to  be  settled  off-hand,  for  no  one,  I  imagine, 
would  go  so  far  as  to  contend  that  Bacon,  Turner,  or  Lincoln 
ought  never  to  have  been  born.  A  precisely  analogous  difficulty 
presents  itself  with  reference  to  the  children  of  parents  pre- 
disposed to  tuberculosis.  A  phthisical  tendency,  probably 
innate,  is  either  expressly  recorded  or  may  safely  be  inferred  in 
regard  to  Richelieu,  Nelson,1  Mozart,  Descartes,  Spinoza,  and 
Francis  d'Assisi.  Every  type  of  greatness  is  represented,  and 
the  correlation  seems  far  too  frequent  to  be  merely  coincidental.2 

1  On  Nelson's  return  from  three  years'  service  on  the  Boreas  in  the  West 
Indies,  aged  twenty-seven,  his  health  was  in  a  wretched  condition,  and  he  was 
considered  to  be  consumptive.  At  this  time  he  had  serious  thoughts  of 
leaving  the  Navy. 

8  In  a  random  sample  of  over  600  families  taken  from  the  modern  popula- 
tion of  Great  Britain,  Prof.  Karl  Pearson  found  that,  in  one  of  every  sixteen 


58  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Nor,  while  speaking  of  the  relation  of  morbid  predispositions, 
mental  or  physical,  to  intellectual  distinction,  should  I  omit 
to  mention  that  Isaac  Newton  was,  for  a  considerable  period, 
actually  insane.1  I  profess  myself,  nevertheless,  in  general 
sympathy  with  the  objects  of  the  eugenic  school ;  I  merely 
enter  this  caveat  against  rash  conclusions  and  unconsidered 
action. 

The  case  of  Frederick  the  Great  presents  features  of  peculiar 
interest,  for,  while  bearing  out  my  view  of  the  frequent  pre- 
dominance of  the  feminine  element  as  a  source  of  genius,  it  differs 
from  the  examples  hitherto  adduced  in  some  respects.  The 
marked  intellectuality  of  Frederick  can  certainly  not  have  been 
derived  from  his  father,  an  uncultivated  boor,  with  a  hatred 
for  the  arts  and  literature  that  reached  the  point  of  fanatical 
fury,  and  a  positive  mania  for  collecting  gigantic  dragoons,  the 
majority  of  whom  were  probably  ungainly  louts,  quite  useless 
for  military  purposes.  Frederick's  mother,  a  daughter  of 
George  I.,  though  she  secretly  encouraged  her  son's  forbidden 
indulgence  in  flute-playing  and  poetising,  seems  to  have  done 
so  rather  in  a  spirit  of  mischief  and  contrariety  than  out  of  a 
genuine  sympathy  with  his  artistic  or  literary  aims.  But 
Frederick's  paternal  grandmother,  Sophia  Charlotte,  a  sister  of 
George  I.,  was  undoubtedly  a  remarkable  woman.  She  was  an 
intimate  friend  of  Leibnitz,  whose  best-known  philosophical 
work  appears  to  have  been  conceived  on  the  basis  of  conversa- 
tions with  her,  whom,  too,  she  zealously  assisted  in  the  founda- 
tion of  an  Academy  of  Science  at  Berlin.  She  received  from  her 
German  subjects  the  significant  title  of  the  "Kepublican  Queen." 
Many  of  her  characteristics  unmistakably  recur  in  the  person- 
ality of  her  grandson.  From  his  father  he  derived,  no  doubt, 
indomitable  will  and  military  talent,  but,  without  the  spark  of 
intellectuality,  these  would  not  have  carried  him  very  far.  In 
this  connection  it  will  be  of  interest  to  consider  the  case  of 

families,  one  or  both  parents  died  of  phthisis.  He  estimates  that  about  half 
the  children  of  phthisical  parents  incur  tuberculosis.  Cf.  Brit.  Med.  Journ., 
2nd  Nov.  1907,  "  The  Inheritance  of  Pulmonary  Tuberculosis." 

1  Newton's  father  died  young,  and  he  himself  was  born  prematurely 
and  not  expected  to  live.  He  lived  to  be  eighty-four,  never  wore  spectacles, 
and  only  lost  one  tooth  ! 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       59 

Darwin,  concerning  whom  his  son  writes  :  "  We  may  hazard  the 
guess  that  Darwin  inherited  the  sweetness  of  his  disposition 
from  the  Wedgwood  (maternal)  side,  while  the  character  of  his 
genius  came  rather  from  the  Darwin  grandfather."  This  grand- 
father, Erasmus  Darwin,  poet,  naturalist,  and  physician,  was 
the  author  of  Zoonomia,  a  work  which,  in  many  respects, 
anticipated  the  evolutionary  theories  of  Lamarck.  Darwin's 
father  was  a  successful  physician,  keenly  observant,  so  intuitive 
that  he  could  read  the  characters,  even  the  thoughts,  of  men, 
sociable  and  sympathetic,  but  quite  destitute  of  capacity  for 
scientific  generalisation.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  credible  that 
intellectual,  as  distinguished  from  aesthetic,  genius  may  be  in 
some  cases  traceable  mainly  to  a  masculine  source.  In  Galileo's 
case,  for  example,  of  whose  mother,  however,  I  have  been  able 
to  acquire  no  information,  there  is  evidence  that  his  father  was 
a  man  of  unusual  originality.  He  was  a  good  mathematician, 
and  wrote  several  treatises  on  music,  which  reveal  considerable 
knowledge  and  insight.  In  his  Dialogue  on  Ancient  and 
Modern  Music,  one  speaker  says,  "  They  who  in  proof  of  my 
assertion  rely  simply  on  the  weight  of  authority,  without  ad- 
vancing any  argument  in  support  of  it,  act  very  absurdly." 
Not  only  is  this  a  sentiment  rarely  held  (or  expressed,  at  any 
rate)  by  sixteenth  century  writers,  it  is  also  quite  in  the 
spirit  of  his  son's  protest  against  the  dogmatic  apriorism  of 
Kepler.  In  the  cases  of  Kant  and  Hegel,  however,  though  the 
fathers  of  both  were  men  of  high  character,  the  mothers  appear 
to  have  been  more  exceptional  in  point  of  mental  capacity. 
But  Kant  and  Hegel  were  philosophers,  not  men  of  science  in 
the  now  accepted  sense ;  and  the  philosopher  has  aesthetic 
affinities.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Kant  was,  on  the 
paternal  side,  of  Scots  descent — a  blend  of  the  Scots  and  the 
German  could  hardly  lack  metaphysical  capacity^!  The  Hegel 
family  seem  to  have  had  a  sort  of  traditional^bias  towards 
officialism,  for  many  of  its  members  held  posts  in  the  civil 
service  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  and 
Hegel  pdre  was  himself  an  officer  in  the  fiscal^department  of 
Stuttgart.  Ithinkthis  has  an  obvious  bearing  on  what  might  per- 
haps be  called  the  bureaucratic  flavour  of  Hegelian  philosophy. 


60  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

The  prophet  Mahomet  came  of  a  valiant  and  illustrious 
tribe,  his  great-grandfather,  Haschem,  being  the  guardian  of 
the  Sacred  Shrine  at  Mecca,  and  his  grandfather  famed  as  the 
deliverer  of  the  city  from  troops  sent  against  it  by  the  Christian 
princes  of  Abyssinia.     Mahomet  was  the  only  son  of  parents 
both  of  whom  died  young,  his  father  when  Mahomet  was  only 
two  years  old,  his  mother,  Amina,  some  six  years  later.     One 
cannot  but  suspect  a  tubercular  taint  in  one  or  both  parents, 
but   I   have    no   positive   evidence   of   its  existence.     Of   all 
Mahomet's  children,  by  one  or  another  of  his  fifteen  to  twenty- 
five  wives  (the  exact  number  is  not  ascertainable),  only  his 
daughter  Fatima  survived  him,  and  she  only  for  a  short  time. 
This  is  a  striking  example  of  what  I  believe  to  be  a  fairly  general 
rule — the  relative  sterility  of  great  men,  and  the  excessive 
morbidity  and  early  mortality  of  their  offspring.     Compare  the 
cases  of  Mozart,  of  whose  seven  children  only  two  survived 
infancy ;  Goethe,  of  whose  five  children  the  eldest  had  a  mal- 
formed brain  which  led  to  his  becoming  an  inebriate,  while  three 
were  still-born,1  and  the  youngest  died  in  infancy ;  Leonardo, 
who  seems  to  have  been  devoid  of  sexual  appetite  ;  Beethoven, 
Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Kant,  all  of  whom  were  celibates  (or  bache- 
lors).   Eeverting  to  the  subject  of  Mahomet's  parentage,  his 
mother,  Amina,  is  stated  (by  Jonathan  Hutchinson)  to  have 
been  a  Christian  Jewess,  noted,  says  Carlyle,  "  for  her  beauty, 
her  worth,  and  her  sense."     In  the  zenith  of  his  power  Mahomet 
visited  her  grave  and  wept  over  it,  but   declared  that  Allah 
would  not  permit  him  to  pray  for  her  salvation,  because  she 
had  died  an  unbeliever.     Of  Mahomet's  father  I  know  only 
that  he  was  the  youngest  and  best-beloved  of  the  sons  of  Abdul 
Motalleb.     Some  of  the  personal  charm  which  distinguished  the 
prophet  was  doubtless  inherited  from  this  short-lived  father, 
but  the  maternal  inheritance  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
predominant  factor  of  his  originality.     Of  Luther,  too,  we  are 
expressly  told  that  he  strongly  resembled  his  mother,  and  the 
fact  is  obvious  on  comparison  of  their  portraits.     From  some 

1  This  may  have  been  due  to  maternal  disease,  rather  than  original  defect 
of  reproductive  power  on  the  part  of  one  or  both  parents.  Or,  more  probably, 
both  factors  were  concerned. 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       61 

unknown  progenitor  he  inherited  his  tall  and  sturdy  frame, 
which  exceeded  that  of  either  of  his  parents.  Luther's  mother 
is  described  as  modest,  extremely  devout,  mild,  and  meditative. 
As  regards  the  mildness  one  cannot  feel  entire  confidence,  as 
the  good  woman  is  said  to  have  whipped  little  Martin  "  till  the 
blood  came  "  for  stealing  a  nut !  Heaven  defend  us  (and  our 
children)  from  such  mildness  !  Martin's  father  was  typical 
of  the  fathers  of  great  men — a  man  of  high  character,  universally 
esteemed,  but  not  otherwise  very  remarkable.  Of  the  Luther 
stock  in  general,  the  Reformer's  own  blunt  description  is  no 
doubt  valid  :  "  All  my  ancestors  were  thorough  peasants." 

When  pointing  out  the  frequency  of  mental  instability 
among  the  parents  of  great  men,  I  might  have  strengthened 
my  case  by  the  mention  of  Kenan's  father,  a  dreamy  and  feck- 
less Breton  seaman,  concerning  the  mystery  of  whose  death  at 
sea  suicide  appears  by  far  the  most  likely  solution.  Kenan's 
mother,  a  tradesman's  daughter  with  Gascon  blood  in  her 
veins,  is  described  as  "  a  lively  little  gipsy,"  who  had  ever  a 
witty  answer  ready,  well  able  to  defend  her  extreme  loyalist 
convictions,  and  to  "  bring  the  laugh  on  her  side."  Her  "  sharp 
brilliance  "  was  mitigated  by  a  leaven  of  devout  Catholicism, 
and  it  was  the  dearest  wish  of  her  heart  that  her  Ernest  should 
be  a  priest.  A  woman  of  "  courageous  gaiety,"  of  solid  judg- 
ment, yet  a  lover  of  the  old  myths  and  legends,  not  above  con- 
sulting the  local  witch,  Gude,  as  to  the  chance  of  her  seven- 
months  child's  survival.  If  it  be  true  of  Renan  that  he  "  felt 
like  a  woman,  thought  like  a  man,  and  acted  like  a  child,"  it 
would  seem  that  he  owed  the  excess  of  sensibility  and  the  un- 
practical impulses  of  his  nature  to  the  paternal,  the  intellectual 
force  and  subtlety  of  his  mind  to  the  maternal  stock.  Both  were 
essential  factors  of  his  idiosyncrasy  and  charm,  yet  there  can 
be  little  doubt  as  to  which  constitutes  the  heavier  debt. 

The  family  history  reserved  for  latest  consideration,  that 
of  Emerson,  presents  features  of  special  interest.  His  father, 
a  Unitarian  minister,  broadly  liberal  in  theological  matters, 
genial  and  social,  came  of  a  stock  whose  traditional  Calvinism 
had  never  been  extreme.  He  was  the  founder  of  a  Philosophical 
Club,  and  had  a  decided  literary  bent.  Yet  he  was  not  markedly 


62  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

original,  and  Dr.  Garnett  does  not  hesitate  to  accredit  the 
higher  and  rarer  qualities  of  Emerson's  mind  to  inheritance 
from  a  mother  "  remarkable  for  mild  softness,  natural  grace, 
and  dignity."  But  when  we  look  more  closely,  we  find  in  a 
sister  of  Emerson's  father — Mary  Moody  Emerson,  decided 
indications  of  originality,  one  is  tempted  to  say,  of  genius. 
She  is  described  as  "  eccentric,  unconventional,  orthodox  by 
conviction,  heterodox  by  temperament,  witty  and  epigram- 
matic." Her  letters  are  strikingly  Emersonian  in  style. 
"  Scorn  trifles,  lift  your  aims,"  was,  we  are  told,  the  burden 
of  her  discourse.  It  would  seem  that  Emerson  received  from 
his  father,  or  through  him,  in  its  fulness,  some  hitherto  latent 
germ  of  idiosyncrasy,  already,  though  less  perfectly,  mani- 
fested in  the  aunt.  A  younger  brother  of  Emerson's,  pre- 
maturely hailed  as  the  genius  of  the  family,  developed  insanity. 
He  recovered,  but  died  young.  Another  brother  was  weak- 
minded,  if  not  imbecile.  Altogether  an  instructive  and 
fairly  typical  family  history. 

I  will  now  briefly  summarise  the  results  of  our  examination 
of  the  very  imperfect  records  considered  in  this  chapter.  We 
found  that  the  families  into  which  great  men,  taken  collectively, 
are  born,  average  nearly  five  members.  The  families  into 
which  men  of  action  are  born  are  the  most  numerous,  those 
of  the  aesthetic  and  intellectual  groups  intermediate  in  size, 
and  those  of  the  ethical  group  the  least  numerous.  In  respect 
of  position  in  family,  we  found  that  the  rule  is  for  great  men 
to  be  born  either  first  or,  more  commonly,  second,  although 
there  are  of  course  exceptions.  Great  men  are  upon  the 
whole  somewhat  long-lived  ;  the  intellectuals  have  the  longest, 
and  the  men  of  action  the  shortest,  average  duration  of  life. 
Although,  for  want  of  necessary  data,  we  were  unable  to  make 
anything  approaching  an  exhaustive  examination  of  the  in- 
heritance of  personal  characteristics  in  any  case,  we  did  find 
in  the  recorded  traits  of  the  parents  and  grandparents  of  great 
men  abundant  evidence  of  transmitted  tendencies  and  capa- 
cities. Nothing  that  we  found  is  in  my  opinion  inconsistent 
with  the  truth  of  the  important  generalisation  known  as  Galton's 
law.  The  evidence  appears  to  show  that  while  the  fathers 


HISTORY,  PARENTAGE,  CONSTITUTION       63 

and  grandfathers  of  great  men  are,  as  a  rule,  men  of  excep- 
tional capacity,  often  achieving  some  distinction  in  the  same 
field  of  life  as  that  destined  to  be  entered  by  their  sons,  the 
definite  emergence  of  genius  is  commonly  traceable  to  a  feminine 
source.  The  mothers  or  grandmothers  of  great  men  are  nearly 
always  remarkable  women,  remarkable  in  a  way  obviously 
relevant  to  the  peculiar  endowment  of  their  sons  or  grandsons. 
Nevertheless,  as  regards  the  particular  form  of  endowment, 
the  special  talent,  which  is  energised  and  qualitatively  enhanced 
or  transformed  by  contribution  from  a  feminine  source,  the 
importance  of  the  paternal  stock  is  by  no  means  to  be  ignored. 
Such  talent  may  be  regarded  as  a  latent  strain  or  tendency 
in  a  given  family  line,  gradually  emerging,  and,  at  last,  under 
the  influence  of  a  specially  favourable  marriage,  attaining  to  full 
realisation  in  the  birth  of  a  man  of  genius. 

I  have  no  patience  with  people  who  affect  to  regard  genius 
as  essentially  pathological,  as  a  disease.  Great  men  are  so 
called  because  they  achieve  things  which  to  other  men  are 
impossible.  Greatness  is  essentially  positive,  but  as  Nature 
exacts  a  price  for  all  her  benefits  it  has  inevitably  a  negative  side. 
Hence  the  morbid  correlations  of  genius  which  we  have  found 
so  conspicuous,  the  dangers,  mental  and  physical,  that  beset 
its  path.  Hence  its  frequent  association  with  consumptivity, 
with  insanity,  with  emotional  aberrations  and  vagaries,  with 
celibacy,  with  sterility,  absolute  or  partial,  with  an  abnormal 
mortality  in  such  offspring  as  may  be  born  to  its  possessors. 

No  higher  task  demands  the  attention  of  science  than  the 
solution  of  this  problem.  How  can  we,  by  the  encouragement 
of  suitable  unions,  at  the  same  time  favour  the  birth  of  men 
of  great  capacity,  and  minimise  the  risk  of  correlative  morbid 
predispositions  ?  How  can  we  buy  genius  from  Nature  on 
the  cheapest  possible  terms  ? 


IV 

PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS 

Men  of  action — Artists,  poets,  and  composers. 

BEFORE  turning  to  our  special  task  of  investigating  the  inner 
lives  of  great  men,  as  expressed  or  suggested  by  their  words 
and  actions,  I  must  ask  the  reader  to  bear  with  me  while  I 
discuss  their  physical  characteristics.  Inasmuch,  however, 
as  the  available  records  refer  mainly  to  the  physiognomies  of 
great  men  in  adult  life  rather  than  in  infancy  or  childhood, 
we  shall  in  this  chapter  be  to  some  extent  anticipating  the 
natural  sequence  of  our  argument.  That  cannot  be  helped  ; 
and  if  it  have  the  effect  of  bringing  before  us,  more  or  less 
vividly,  the  lineaments  of  some  of  the  great  men  with  whom 
we  are  concerned,  the  digression  will  be  justified.  For  to  see 
a  man,  even  with  the  mind's  eye,  and  imperfectly  at  that,  is 
in  some  degree  to  be  prepared  for  an  understanding  of  his 
inner  self.  So  that,  even  if  we  seem  to  have  gained  little 
in  the  way  of  definite  results  or  generalisations  by  our 
study  of  the  physical  basis  of  human  greatness,  that 
study  will  probably  have  been  less  barren  than  it  appears. 
The  first  and  most  obvious  essential  for  success  in  the  field  of 
action  would  seem  to  be  an  adequate  supply  of  energy,  and 
it  would  be  surprising  if  in  the  biographies  of  men  of  this  class 
we  failed  to  find  evidence  of  superior  endowment  in  this  respect. 
Energy,  as  it  manifests  itself  in  a  living  organism,  assumes 
and  is  limited  by  the  forms  of  specific  functional  activities. 
Its  basis  is  not  a  mere  generic  potentiality,  but  a  definite 
organised  capacity  of  some  kind — nutritive,  metabolic,  repro- 
ductive, muscular,  mental,  cerebral,  perhaps  we  may  add 
psychic  or  spiritual — as  the  case  may  be.  There  is  ample 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  65 

evidence  apart  from  the  tale  of  his  achievements,  that  the 
typical  man  of  action  is  richly  endowed  with  vital  energy  of 
such  kinds  as  are  inseparable  from  a  well-developed,  powerful 
frame,  an  alert  nervous  system,  and  a  vigorous  brain.  In  two 
cases  only  of  our  ten  examples  we  shall  find  some  apparent 
discrepancy  between  the  physical  endowment  and  the  energies 
displayed.  For  purposes  of  comparison  I  have  divided  these 
ten  examples  into  four  minor  groups  as  follows  :— 

Heroic  stature ;  exceptional  muscular  power          •  |  T  •      i 

/  Caesar. 

Tall  or  medium  stature;  muscular  strength  some-  J  William  the  Silent, 
what  above  average         .  .  .  .1  Cromwell. 

'  Frederick  the  Great. 

( Drake 
Short,  thick-set  frame ;  strength  above  average      •  1  -vr       i 

Medium    or    small    stature ;     muscular    strength  \     . 

probably  below  average ;   great  neuro-cerebral  I    1   le  ieu> 
activity I*el80n- 

With  regard  to  the  second  of  these  minor  groups,  it  should  be 
added  that  Csesar  and  Frederick  were  men  of  the  "  wiry  "  type  ; 
William  the  Silent  and  Cromwell,  especially  the  latter,  somewhat 
heavily  built ;  Napoleon,  of  course,  was  lean  and  ascetic-looking 
in  his  early  manhood,  but  towards  middle  life  assumed  the 
more  corpulent  shape  with  which  we  are  all  familiar.  The 
cases  of  Richelieu  and  Nelson  are  of  great  interest,  as  those  of 
men  who  achieved  supreme  distinction  in  the  field  of  action 
(including  military  service)  in  spite  of  physical  disabilities  which 
might  a  priori  almost  have  been  considered  prohibitive.  It  is, 
for  example,  a  well-known  fact  that  Nelson  was  invariably 
sea-sick  at  the  beginning  of  every  voyage.  Obviously  much 
more  than  mere  bodily  vigour  goes  to  the  making  of  a  great  man 
of  action  :  the  utmost  we  seem  warranted  in  concluding  is  that 
exceptional  vigour  may  be  looked  for  in  the  great  majority  of 
men  who  achieve  distinction  in  war  or  statesmanship.  Where 
it  is  lacking,  its  absence  must  obviously  be  compensated  by 
excess  of  some  (higher)  qualities.  It  may  be  of  interest  to  add 
some  further  details  of  the  physique  and  physiognomy  of  men  of 
action,  and  in  doing  so  I  will  adhere  approximately  to  the  order 
5 


66  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  sequence  given  above,  which  forms  a  kind  of  descending  scale. 
Of  Charlemagne  we  are  told  that  he  was  tall  above  the  common, 
broad-shouldered  and  strongly  built.  His  neck  was  noticeably 
short  and  muscular  :  he  was,  in  fact,  "  bull-necked."  He  had  a 
prominent,  hawk-like  nose,  large  eyes,  and  a  high  forehead.  His 
aspect  was  alert  and  cheerful,  his  voice  clear  but  not  loud,  and 
his  energy  was  apparently  inexhaustible.  He  became  corpulent 
in  his  later  days.  With  regard  to  his  muscular  strength,  we 
learn  that  he  could  straighten  four  horse-shoes  together,  could 
fell  a  horse  and  its  rider  with  his  fist,  or  lift  a  fully-equipped 
warrior  with  one  hand  to  the  height  of  his  own  head. 

Lincoln's  height  in  his  prime  was  six  feet  four  inches.  He 
was  always  a  lean  man,ungainly  as  to  gait,  and  though  exception- 
ally strong  had  a  constitutional  indolence  in  regard  to  physical 
(not  mental)  exertion.  His  hair  was  very  dark.  So  was  his 
complexion,  and  the  skin  of  his  face  was  lined  and  shrivelled, 
perhaps  from  exposure  during  his  early  farm  life.  He  could 
carry  six  hundred  pounds  with  ease,  and  once  picked  up  some 
huge  posts  which  four  men  were  preparing  to  lift,  and  bore  them 
away  with  little  effort.  When  Lincoln  was  a  young  man  there 
was  no  one  far  or  near  who  dared  compete  with  him  in  wrestling. 

Julius  Caesar  was  tall  and  somewhat  slight,  with  dark  grey 
eyes,  refined  features,  and  wide  lofty  brow.  His  muscular 
development  was  no  doubt  excellent,  for  the  long  neck  was 
erect  and  sinewy,  a  conditon  always,  I  believe,  indicative  of 
exceptional  strength  and  activity.  Caesar's  head  was  somewhat 
small,  relatively  to  his  height,  and  his  hair  was  thin  and  scanty. 
He  suffered  from  epilepsy  towards  the  end  of  his  life,  and  seems 
to  have  had  no  sense  of  smell  worth  mentioning,  as  he  ate 
rancid  oil  on  one  occasion  without  remark. 

William  the  Silent  was  somewhat  above  the  medium  height, 
spare,  well-proportioned,  and  fairly  strong.  His  complexion  was 
brownish ;  he  had  curling  auburn  hair  and  brown  eyes,  large, 
bright,  and  penetrating.  The  forehead  was  open  and  domed  ; 
the  nose  large,  powerfully  formed,  and  wide  at  the  base.  He  had 
a  fine  round  massive  chin  ;  the  mouth  was  full  but  closely  set, 
rather  severe  and  melancholy.  His  general  aspect  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five  was  one  of  power,  self-control,  intensity,  and  pro- 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  67 

found  thoughtfulness.  In  strict  keeping  with  hia  physiognomy 
is  the  account  given  of  William  by  a  Catholic  opponent :  "  Never 
did  arrogant  or  indiscreet  word  issue  from  his  mouth  under  the 
impulse  of  anger  or  other  passion.  He  was  master  of  a  sweet 
and  winning  power  of  persuasion,  by  means  of  which  he  gave 
form  to  the  great  ideas  within  him,  and  thus  he  succeeded 
in  bending  to  his  will  the  other  lords  about  the  court  as  he 
chose.  He  was  beloved  and  in  high  favour  above  all  men  with 
the  people."  The  last  twelve  years  of  William's  life  were 
passed  in  hourly  peril  of  assassination,  and  so  great  were  the 
hardships  and  so  many  the  vicissitudes  he  endured,  that  at  the 
age  of  fifty-one  he  was  bald,  wrinkled,  furrowed  with  ague  and 
sorrow.  The  mouth  now  is  not  merely  firm-set,  but  locked  as  it 
were  with  iron,  and  there  is  a  strained  look  in  the  deep-set 
watchful  eyes.  Yet  the  old  charm  of  manner  persisted,  and  in 
all  his  converse  "  an  outward  passage  of  inward  greatness " 
was  observed.  It  is  noteworthy  that  William  was  four  times 
married,  and  was  the  father  of  three  sons  and  nine  daughters. 

Oliver  Cromwell  was  of  the  stature  of  five  feet  ten  inches, 
powerfully  and  somewhat  heavily  built.  His  head  was  large  and 
square,  his  countenance  massive,  red,  and  swollen.  He  had  a 
thick,  prominent  red  nose  (perhaps  indicating  dyspepsia) ;  a 
heavy,  gnarled  brow  ;  firm,  penetrating,  sad  eyes  ;  a  square  jaw, 
and  close-set  mouth.  His  upper  lip  and  chin  were  clothed  with 
scanty  tufts  of  hair,  his  head  with  flowing  brown  locks.  His 
general  aspect  bespoke  energy,  firmness,  passion,  pity,  and 
sorrow.  In  his  childhood  he  was  afflicted  with  fearful  dreams 
and  dreadful  visions,  and  in  manhood  be  became  a  religious 
hypochondriac.  Dr.  Simcott  of  Huntingdon  calls  him  "  most 
splenetic,"  and  was  often  summoned  at  midnight  by  Oliver  to 
dispel  "  phansyes  "  and  convictions  of  imminent  death.  Crom- 
well's voice  was  described  by  a  contemporary  as  "  harsh  and 
untuneable  "  ;  such  a  voice  is,  I  believe,  a  not  infrequent  accom- 
paniment of  hypochondria,  and  readily  assumes  a  querulous 
tone. 

Frederick  the  Great  was  of  medium  stature,  his  limbs  well 
formed,  his  aspect  vigorous  and  healthy.  His  features  were 
highly  pleasing,  the  expression  animated  and  noble.  His 


68  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

large  blue  eyes  were  at  once  severe,  soft,  and  gracious.  His 
bright  brown  hair  was  carelessly  curled,  and,  in  characteristic 
defiance  of  the  convenances,  he  refused  to  wear  a  wig.  As 
to  his  manners,  Bielfeld  considered  him  the  most  polite  man 
in  the  kingdom,  though  he  could  be  dry  enough,  even  caustic, 
on  occasion.  Such  was  Frederick  in  1738  (aged  twenty-six), 
two  years  before  the  beginning  of  that  long  reign  of  which 
the  first  twenty-two  years  were  to  be  spent  in  almost  incessant 
warfare  against  enemies  whose  numbers  seemed  ever  to  increase. 
At  forty-eight  Frederick  was  already  old.  To  the  Countess  de 
Camas  he  writes  in  1760 :  "  This  is,  I  swear,  such  a  dog's 
life  as  no  one  except  Don  Quixote  ever  led  but  myself.  All 
this  bustle,  all  this  confusion  has  made  me  such  an  old  fellow, 
that  you  would  hardly  know  me  again.  The  hair  on  the  right 
side  of  my  head  is  grown  quite  grey ;  my  teeth  break  and  fall 
out ;  my  face  is  full  of  wrinkles  as  the  furbelow  of  a  petticoat ; 
and  my  body  is  arched  like  a  monk's  of  La  Trappe."  Like 
Napoleon  and  other  great  generals,  Frederick  seems  to  have 
had  the  faculty  of  sleeping  at  will.  After  the  defeat  of  Kuners- 
dorff,  where  he  had  two  horses  killed  under  him,  his  clothes 
riddled  with  bullets,  lost  twenty  thousand  men  and  all  his 
artillery,  he  was  found  lying,  with  his  bare  sword  beside  him, 
guarded  by  a  single  grenadier,  sleeping  as  quietly  and  soundly 
as  if  he  had  been  in  the  securest  place.  But  this  may  after 
all  have  been  but  the  sleep  of  utter  exhaustion,  and  as  such 
less  exceptional  than  it  appears.  What  is  unquestionable 
is  the  extraordinary  power  of  recovery,  in  virtue  of  which  it 
has  been  truly  said  that  Frederick  was  never  greater  or  more 
formidable  than  after  a  disaster  or  defeat.  Frederick  appears 
to  have  been  singularly  deficient  in  sexual  susceptibility,  and, 
it  is  asserted,  never  cohabited  with  his  wife.  Voltaire  says  of  him 
that  "  he  did  not  love  the  ladies,"  and  that  in  his  palace  at 
Sans  Souci  neither  women  nor  priests  were  ever  seen.  It 
should,  however,  be  mentioned  that  when  Frederick  was  about 
eighteen  his  father  learnt  of  an  intrigue  conducted  by  him 
with  a  schoolmaster's  daughter — she  happened  to  be  musical, 
a  distinct  aggravation  of  her  offence — and  the  old  scoundrel 
had  her  whipped  through  Berlin,  making  his  son  witness  the 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  69 

scene.  Perhaps  it  is  not  surprising  that  Frederick  repudiated 
the  bride  forced  upon  him  by  such  a  father,  although  Eliza- 
beth Christina  is  described  as  a  beautiful  and  accomplished 
princess. 

The  portrait  of  Drake  shows  a  man  below  medium  stature, 
broad-shouldered  and  thick-set,  with  good  features,  curly  hair, 
a  high  forehead,  and  alert  expression.  The  eyes  are  some- 
what small,  and  the  plump  hands  finely  shaped.  A  man  of 
unbounded  self-confidence  and  of  magnetic  personality  he  looks, 
and  undoubtedly  was.  The  neck  is  short,  and  the  complexion, 
presumably,  florid.  Far  more  difficult  is  the  task  of  summar- 
ising the  physical  characteristics  of  Napoleon.  At  twenty- 
eight  he  is  described  as  small  in  stature,  thin  and  pale,  with  an 
air  of  fatigue  and  abstraction.  The  weary  look  may  be  attrib- 
utable to  his  recent  exertions  in  his  Italian  campaign,  from 
which  it  is,  I  think,  probable  that  he  never  wholly  recovered. 
Bourrienne  says  of  Napoleon  that  his  finely  shaped  head,  his 
superb  forehead,  his  pale  and  elongated  visage,  his  medita- 
tive look,  have  been  transported  to  the  canvas,  but  the  quick- 
ness of  his  glance  and  the  rapidity  of  his  changes  of  expression 
were  beyond  imitation.  Napoleon  was  particularly  proud  of 
his  beautiful  hands,  was  fastidiously  neat  as  to  his  toilet,  very 
temperate  in  regard  to  diet,  and  had  a  mania  for  hot  baths, 
in  which  he  would  sometimes  remain  for  hours.  Perhaps  there 
is  no  better  test  of  constitutional  vigour  than  the  early  or  late 
decay  of  the  teeth,  and  it  is  therefore  noteworthy  that  Napoleon's 
first  tooth  extraction  (unnecessary  even  then)  occurred  at  St. 
Helena  when  he  was  over  fifty-six.  In  his  prime,  says  Lord 
Rosebery,  he  was  incapable  of  fatigue.  He  fought  Alvinzy 
once  for  five  days  without  taking  off  his  boots.  He  would 
post  from  Poland  to  Paris,  summon  a  council  at  once,  and 
preside  over  it  for  eight  or  ten  hours.  Once,  at  2.0  a.m.,  the 
councillors  were  all  worn  out,  one  Minister  fast  asleep. 
Napoleon  still  urged  them — "  Come,  gentlemen,  pull  yourselves 
together  ;  we  must  earn  the  money  that  the  nation  gives  us." 
He  could  work  for  eighteen  hours  at  a  stretch,  sometimes  at  one 
subject,  sometimes  at  a  variety.  The  portrait  of  Napoleon  by 
Paul  Delaroche,  painted  apparently  at  the  age  of  thirty-five  or 


70  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

perhaps  a  little  later,  shows  him  already  becoming  corpulent, 
but  with  a  look  of  almost  godlike  power.  A  son  of  Lord  Glen- 
bervie,  who  had  seen  him  at  Elba,  says  that  his  features  were 
rather  coarse,  and  his  eyes  very  light  and  particularly  dull. 
But  his  mouth,  when  he  smiled,  was  full  of  a  very  sweet,  good- 
humoured  expression — perhaps  the  secret  of  his  never-failing 
charm.  This  witness,  in  agreement  with  most  others,  was 
greatly  disappointed  at  the  first  aspect  of  Napoleon,  thinking 
him  "  a  very  common-looking  man."  But  upon  observing 
him  and  conversing  with  him  "  you  perceive  that  his  counten- 
ance is  full  of  deep  thought  and  decision."  The  personal 
magnetism  of  Napoleon  is  a  fact  hardly  accountable  by  the 
above  description,  but  of  its  existence  and  extraordinary  power 
of  attraction  upon  almost  all  who  were  brought  into  personal 
touch  with  him,  there  can  be  no  possible  doubt.  "  Were  I  you," 
said  Montchenu  to  Hudson  Lowe,  "  I  would  not  allow  a  single 
stranger  to  visit  Longwood,  for  they  all  leave  it  in  a  transport 
of  devotion,  which  they  take  back  to  Europe."  "  What  is 
most  astonishing,"  says  the  Russian  Commissioner,  "  is  the 
ascendancy  that  this  man,  dethroned,  a  prisoner,  exercises 
on  all  who  come  near  him.  No  one  dares  to  treat  him  as  an 
equal."  The  crew  of  the  Bellerophon  who  conveyed  him  to 
St.  Helena,  sounded  by  Maitland,  said  :  "  If  the  English  knew 
him  as  well  as  we  do,  they  would  not  touch  a  hair  of  his  head." 
The  crew  of  the  Northumberland  said  :  "  He  is  a  fine  fellow, 
who  does  not  deserve  his  fate."  On  his  leaving  the  Undaunted, 
which  had  brought  him  to  Elba,  the  boatswain,  for  the  ship's 
company,  wished  him  long  life  and  prosperity,  and  "  better 
luck  next  time"  Thinkers  of  the  Tolstoy  an  school  may  belittle 
the  role  of  the  leader  of  men,  and  labour  to  reduce  him  to  the 
insignificance  of  a  mere  figurehead,  but  such  facts,  among 
many  others,  give  the  lie  direct  to  their  contention. 

Of  the  eleven  children  borne  by  Nelson's  mother,  only 
two  lived  to  be  old,  and  she  herself  died  at  forty-two.  The 
delicacy  of  Nelson's  own  constitution  is  thus  clearly  of  maternal 
origin.  His  diminutive  figure,  shock  head,  and  pronounced 
features  are  too  familiar  to  need  description.  Nelson's  con- 
versation and  manners  have  been  described  by  contemporaries 


SIR    FRANCIS    DRAKE. 
Kngra-'ed  !>y  •*>'•  l-'rccinanfrotn  an  otiginal  painting. 


To/au-f    70. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  71 

as  "  irresistibly  pleasing,"  and  it  is  certain  that  he  possessed 
the  secret  of  endearing  himself  to  gentle  and  simple.  He 
was  idolised  by  his  men,  who  did  far  more  for  love  of  him  than 
they  did  through  fear  of  sterner  disciplinarians.  Nelson's 
excitable  temperament,  by  turns  enthusiastic  and  sombre, 
sometimes  betrayed  him  into  a  boastfulness  or  ostentation 
which  made  him  slightly  ridiculous.  The  famous  interview 
with  Wellington  on  the  basis  of  which  George  Bernard  Shaw 
indulges  in  some  characteristically  insolent  depreciation l  is, 
however,  probably  mythical.  Wellington's  own  account  of 
his  personal  relations  with  Nelson  is  to  the  effect  that  he  once 
met  him  on  the  stairs  ! 

Richelieu,  our  last  example  of  the  men  of  action,  was  in 
all  but  the  constitutional  weakness  and  tubercular  tendency 
which  they  shared,  the  antithesis  of  the  impulsive,  indiscreet 
Nelson.  Tall  and  slight,  with  clear-cut  distinguished  features, 
arched  eyebrows,  piercing  black  eyes,  thin  compressed  lips  and 
aloof  manner,  he  looked,  superficially,  rather  the  man  of  letters 
or  the  ascetic  priest  than  the  masterful  politician.  But  though 
he  never  felt,  he  could  inspire,  unlimited  devotion,  and  the  rare 
smile  of  those  thin  lips  had  a  singular  charm  of  its  own. 
Richelieu  looked  really  what  he  was — incarnate  will  to  power, 
intellectual  but  not  passionate,  implacable  but  not  cruel. 
He  suffered  from  excruciating  headaches,  probably  of  malarial 
origin,  though  he  is  of  the  type  commonly  subject  to  migraine  ; 
and  died  of  pulmonary  haemorrhage,  supervening  on  a  tubercular 
abscess  of  the  arm.  Such  was  the  frail  casket  which  enclosed  "the 
greatest  political  genius  France  has  ever  produced,"  such  was 
he  whose  life  is,  for  an  eventful  period  of  nearly  twenty  years, 
the  history  of  his  country,  and  "  to  a  great  extent  of  Europe," 
rightly  acclaimed  by  a  biographer 2  as  "  the  grandest  figure 
among  those  who  have  contributed  most  to  the  greatness  of 
France." 

Probably  most  people,  if  challenged  off-hand  to  give  their 
opinion  of  the  physique  of  the  typical  artist,  poet,  or  musician, 
would  without  hesitation  describe  a  pale  and  sickly  individual 

1  "  Preface  for  Politicians,"  John  Bull's  Other  Island,  and  Major  Barbara. 
8  Prof.  Richard  Lodge. 


72  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  ill-developed  frame,  poor  muscular  development,  and 
sedentary  habit.  Such  a  view  of  the  matter  will,  so  far  at 
least  as  artists  of  the  first  rank  are  concerned,  be  summarily 
dismissed  by  those  who  appeal  to  the  facts.  The  morbid 
correlations  of  assthetic  genius  are  undoubted,  but  for  the 
most  part  of  a  less  obvious  kind  than  mere  (external)  physical 
defect  or  debility.  This  will  be  evident  from  a  glance  at  the 
subjoined  classification  : — 

{Leonardo. 
Titian  (lived  to  be  99). 
Goethe. 
Flaubert. 
Scott. 

..,   ,.  |  Cervantes. 

Medium  stature,  average  strength.  .  •  1  D     t 

Short  or  "  stocky  "  frame,  strength  good  or  fair  •   |  -D    ^ 
Short  stature,  poor  physique  (brain  excepted)     .      Mozart. 

So  far  as  my  examples  go,  it  would  seem  that  the  aesthetic  in- 
dividual, physically  regarded,  can  quite  hold  his  own  with  the 
man  of  action.  It  may  even  be  questioned  whether  he  have 
not  the  better  of  the  comparison,  for  if  no  poet  or  artist  in  my 
list  reaches  the  physical  standard  of  Charlemagne  or  Lincoln 
(and  with  regard  to  Leonardo  at  least,  even  this  is  doubtful), 
the  proportion  of  distinctly  "  fine  "  men  seems  to  be  a  little 
higher  among  my  aesthetic  than  my  practical  group.  However, 
such  very  rough  attempts  at  classification  must  not  be  pressed 
too  far,  nor  trusted  as  the  grounds  of  hasty  conclusions. 

Descending  now  to  details,  we  find  in  our  first  example  of 
the  aesthetic  type,  Leonardo,  a  man,  though  on  the  maternal 
side  of  peasant  origin,  of  truly  prince-like  presence  and  bearing. 
His  pastel  portrait  of  himself  in  old  age  is  that  of  a  superb 
type  of  virile  beauty  —  aquiline  features,  large  impressive 
eyes  with  shaggy  eyebrows,  thoughtful  furrowed  brow,  long 
flowing  hair  and  beard.  He  was  a  man  of  large  ideas,  one  who 
loved  fine  horses  and  handsome  men.  Salai  and  Menz,  two 
art  pupils  who  in  his  later  life  were  much  with  him,  were  men  of 

1  As  regards  Flaubert,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  he  seems  never  to  have  been 
the  same  after  his  illness  in  early  manhood. 


CARDINAL    R1CHKLIKU. 
vfti  by  If.  Kol'inson  front  a  painting  by  /'.  tfc  Champagne. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  73 

decided  beauty.  Leonardo  was  a  man  of  quite  exceptional 
strength — a  true  superman,  if  there  ever  were  one — and  of 
remarkable  physical  dexterity.  In  dress  he  ignored  to  some 
extent  the  conventions  of  his  day. 

Of  the  physique  and  personality  of  Titian  my  authorities 
give  no  detailed  account,  but  from  a  reproduction  of  his  portrait 
of  himself  in  old  age  one  gets  the  impression  of  strength,  beauty, 
and  distinction.  All  that  is  known  of  his  life  and  of  the  re- 
tention, rather  the  unchecked  growth,  of  his  artistry  into 
extreme  age,  points  emphatically  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
physique  of  Titian  was  exceptionally  good.  The  Pietd  upon 
which  Titian  was  probably  at  work  when  struck  down  at  the 
age  of  ninety-nine  by  plague,  is  in  some  respects  his  most 
sublime  invention.  The  figures  of  Moses  and  the  Sybil  are, 
says  Claude  Phillips,  products  of  a  religious  awe  nearly  akin 
to  terror.  Stranger  yet  is  the  sting  of  earthly  passion  still 
so  evident  in  some  of  his  latest  work. 

Goethe,  like  his  mother,  had  brown  hair  and  lustrous  dark 
eyes,  the  penetrating  glance  of  which,  we  are  told,  "  never 
failed  to  impress  those  who  met  him."  Like  his  father,  he 
became  a  man  of  robust  build,  vigorous  and  active,  and  above 
medium  height.  Goethe,  in  his  youth,  was  wild  and  even 
dissipated,  and  his  mental  and  bodily  health  were  for  a  time 
seriously  impaired.  In  his  nineteenth  year  he  had  severe 
haemoptysis,  by  far  the  commonest  cause  of  which  is  of 
course  a  tubercular  invasion. 

In  his  twentieth  year  he  was  again  very  ill,  suffered  greatly 
from  depression,  and,  under  the  influence  of  Fraulein  von  Ketten- 
burg,  became  deeply  interested  in  religious  mysticism  and 
occult  studies,  the  results  of  which  are  plainly  seen  in  Faust. 
It  speaks  well  for  the  reparative  powers  of  his  constitution 
that  Johanna  Schopenhauer,  meeting  him  at  the  age  of 
fifty-seven,  could  describe  Goethe  as  follows  :  "  He  is  the 
most  perfect  being  I  ever  knew,  even  in  appearance.  A  tall, 
fine  figure  which  holds  itself  erect,  very  carefully  clad, 
always  in  black  or  quite  dark  blue,  the  hair  tastefully  dressed 
and  powdered  as  becomes  his  age,  and  a  splendid  face  with 
lustrous  brown  eyes  which  are  at  once  mild  and  penetrating." 


74  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Napoleon,  when,  a  little  later,  Goethe  was  presented  to  him  at 
Erfurt,  exclaimed  with  enthusiasm,  "  Voila  un  homme  !  "  And 
everyone  must  recall  the  famous  visit  of  young  Heine  to  the 
great  poet,  then  over  seventy,  at  Weimar,  and  how,  impressed 
by  his  Olympian  bearing,  he  looked  involuntarily  for  the  eagle 
at  his  side.  "  The  accordance  of  personal  appearance  with 
genius,"  he  tells  us,  "  was  conspicuous  in  Goethe.  His  eyes 
were  tranquil  as  those  of  a  god.  Time  had  been  powerful 
enough  to  cover  his  head  with  snow,  but  not  to  bend  it ;  he 
carried  it  ever  proud  and  high  ;  and  when  he  spoke  he  seemed 
to  grow  bigger." 

Equally  striking  in  its  own  way  was  the  appearance  of 
Gustave  Flaubert,  who  from  his  childhood  was  remarkable  for 
beauty  of  form  and  colour.  A  contemporary  1  meeting  him  at 
the  age  of  twenty-one,  describes  him  as  "  a  tall  fellow  with  a 
long  fair  beard,  and  his  hat  over  his  ear.  .  .  .  He  was  of  heroic 
beauty.  With  his  white  skin,  slightly  flushed  upon  the  cheeks, 
his  long  floating  hair,  his  tall  broad-shouldered  figure,  his 
abundant  golden  beard,  his  enormous  eyes — the  colour  of  the 
green  of  the  sea — veiled  under  black  eyelashes,  with  his  voice 
sonorous  as  the  blast  of  a  trumpet,  his  exaggerated  gestures 
and  resounding  laugh  ;  he  was  like  those  young  Gallic  chiefs  who 
fought  against  the  Roman  armies."  An  interesting  fact  re- 
corded about  Flaubert  is  his  possession  of  an  ear  so  sensitive 
to  harmonious  or  discordant  sounds  as  to  be  at  times  a  source  of 
positive  torture.2  This  peculiarity  is  obviously  relevant  to  the 
extreme  fastidiousness  of  the  author  of  Salammbo  in  the  matter 
of  literary  style.  His  mother  once  said  of  it  to  him — hugely 
to  his  own  delight — that  the  mania  for  phrases  had  dried  up 
his  heart.  Nothing  short  of  perfection  contented  him — he 
must  have  the  right  word  or  none.  He  loved  bizarre  names 
and  exotic  splendours,  and  in  the  throes  of  writing  would  groan, 
howl,  chant  the  newly-finished  phrases,  even  burst  into  tears  of 
despair.  "  I  am  driven  wild  with  writing,"  he  complains  to  a 
correspondent.  "  Style,  which  is  a  thing  that  I  take  very  much 

1  Maxime  Ducamp. 

2  He  speaks  of  having  heard  people  speaking  in  a  low  voice  thirty  yards 
away  and  through  closed  doors. 


OLIVER   CROMWELL. 

Engraved  l,y  II'.  Sharp  front  an  original  picture  in  t  lie  possession  of 
K.  Oalton,  Esq.,  London. 


To  face  p.  ,-4. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  75 

in  earnest,  agitates  my  nerves  horribly.  I  vex  myself,  I  prey 
on  myself ;  there  are  days  when  I  am  quite  ill  from  it,  and 
when  I  am  feverish  at  night.  .  .  .  To-day,  for  example,  I 
have  spent  eight  hours  in  correcting  five  pages,  and  I  think 
that  I  have  worked  well ;  judge  of  the  rest !  It  is  pitiful." 
With  such  a  temperament  it  is  hardly  surprising  that  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one  Flaubert  became  the  subject  of  severe  attacks  of 
hystero-epilepsy.  The  illness  was  attributed  by  his  worthy 
father  to  "  excess  of  vitality "  (whatever  that  may  be),  and 
treated  on  drastically  depletive  lines.  The  seizures  passed  off 
gradually,  but  left  much  depression  and  weakness.  "  Hence- 
forth," he  tells  us,  "  I  was  afraid  of  life."  I  hesitate  whether 
to  attribute  this  misfortune  to  the  malady  itself  or  to  the  paternal 
treatment.  Flaubert,  of  course,  never  married,  but  he  had  a 
love  affair  of  eight  years'  duration  with  a  married  woman,1 
which,  if  not  perhaps  entirely  Platonic,  was  at  any  rate  largely 
a  matter  of  correspondence.  There  is  little  doubt  that  he  was 
weary  of  the  connection  long  before  he  could  bring  it  to  an  end. 
He  himself  attributes  his  comparative  celibacy  to  principle, 
professing  to  regard  the  marriage  of  an  artist  as  a  supreme 
apostasy.  One  suspects,  however,  an  instinctive  sense  of  his 
own  physical  unfitness,  unacknowledged  even  to  himself. 
Men  do  not  remain  bachelors  on  principle,  unless  they, 'have 
taken  vows,  and,  in  the  physiological  sense,  not  always  then. 

Our  last  example  of  the  "  fine  man  "  among  members  of  the 
aesthetic  group  is  Walter  Scott,  who  at  nineteen  was  a  youth  of 
tall  stature,  with  a  chest  and  throat  of  Herculean  mould,  a  fresh, 
brilliant  complexion,  clear,  open  eyes  of  a  lightish  grey,  well-set 
and  of  changeful  radiance,  a  noble  expanse  of  brow,  long  upper 
lip,  brown  hair  and  eyelashes,  flaxen  eyebrows.  Scott's  homely 
features  were  often  lit  up  by  a  charming  smile  ;  his  expression 
was  by  turns  tender,  grave,  playful,  and  humorous.  His  small 
head  was  erect,  his  hands  were  finely  moulded,  and  his  general 
aspect  and  bearing  bespoke  vigour  without  clumsiness.  He  had 
a  verbal  memory  of  astounding  tenacity,  but  his  appreciation 
of  music  was  not  keen  or  accurate,  and  he  had  little  sense  of 
odour.  Nor  was  his  talk  in  any  way  brilliant ;  rather  it  was 

1  Living  apart  from  her  husband  in  a  literary  set  in  Paris. 


76  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

remarkable  for  a  certain  homespun  quality  of  unfailing  good 
sense  and  sobriety.  Lord  Cockburn  said  of  him  that  his  plain 
sense  was  even  more  wonderful  than  his  genius.  Scott  was  lame 
in  the  right  leg  as  the  result  of  an  attack  of  infantile  paralysis 
which  he  incurred  at  the  age  of  eighteen  months.  I  do  not 
consider  this  defect  necessarily  attributable  to  any  hereditary 
taint,  as  the  disease  in  question,  an  inflammatory  lesion  of  the 
nerve  cells  in  the  anterior  portion  of  the  grey  matter  of  the  spinal 
cord,  conforms  in  type  to  the  specific  febrile  maladies  of  child- 
hood, and  has  possibly  a  microbic  origin.  Scott's  lameness  may 
therefore  be  regarded  as  an  accident,  and  if  there  be  any  truth 
in  the  view  of  his  tutor  that  his  turn  for  reading  was  fostered 
by  the  limitations  it  imposed,  must  be  accounted  a  blessing  in 
disguise.  His  brain,  on  examination,  was  "  not  large."  James 
Ballantyne,  whose  familiarity  with  him  dates  from  the  time 
when  they  were  boys  together,  testifies  to  the  quite  remarkable 
ascendency  which  in  his  early  days  he  never  failed  to  exhibit 
over  his  young  companions,  handicapped  as  he  was  in  all  active 
pursuits  by  his  lameness.  This  personal  magnetism,  usually 
associated  with  a  constitution  of  more  than  average  vigour,  is  a 
common  characteristic  of  the  born  leader  of  men.  Its  possession 
by  Scott  confirms  me  in  the  impression  that  but  for  his  lameness 
and  its  effect  in  confirming  his  early  romantic  and  literary  bias, 
he  might  ultimately  have  deserted  literature  for  politics  or  any 
other  field  promising  freer  scope  to  his  vast  energy  and  a  fuller 
attainment  of  the  social  and  civic  prizes  that  he  unquestionably 
valued.  There  was  nothing  morbid  in  Scott's  temperament  : 
he  loved  youth  and  sunshine,  and,  sexually,  appears  to  have  been 
entirely  normal. 

Cervantes,  at  the  age  of  thirty-three,  on  his  return  from  five 
years'  slavery  at  Algiers,  was  by  his  own  account  a  man  of 
medium  height,  heavily  built  about  the  shoulders,  of  a  bright 
fair  complexion,  with  aquiline  features,  chestnut  hair,  smooth 
unruffled  brow,  arched  nose,  sparkling  eyes,  a  silver  beard,  large 
moustache,  small  mouth,  and  only  six  teeth  in  his  head.  He 
was  near-sighted  and  of  hesitant  speech.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  personality  of  this  great  man  had  an  extraordinary 
charm,  nor  that  he  was  brave  to  a  fault.  During  his  captivity 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  77 

he  was  the  promoter  of  three  or  four  daring  attempts  to  effect  his 
own  escape  and  that  of  many  of  his  companions  in  misfortune, 
always  foiled  by  the  cowardice  or  treachery  of  some  comrade. 
Such  attempts  on  the  part  of  the  Christian  slaves  were  the  one 
unpardonable  crime — the  usual  punishment  was  torture  or 
death.  Yet  Cervantes,  always  eager  to  take  the  full  blame  on  his 
own  shoulders,  was  inexplicably  spared  by  the  viceroy,  Hassan 
Pasha,  a  man  of  whom  Cervantes  himself  says  that  "  every  day 
he  hanged  some  one,  impaled  another,  and  cut  oS  the  ears  of  a 
third  ...  for  nothing  else  than  because  it  was  his  will  to  do  it." 
Brought  before  this  terrible  man,  with  a  rope  already  round  his 
neck,  even  the  threat  of  torture  failed  to  induce  Cervantes  to 
implicate  any  one  save  himself.  Hassan  seems  even  to  have  had 
a  strange  fear  of  this  indomitable  captive  :  he  never  spoke  to  him 
an  ill  word,  and  was  heard  once  to  say  that,  could  he  preserve 
himself  against  this  maimed  Spaniard — Cervantes  had  lost  the 
use  of  his  left  hand  at  Lepanto — he  would  hold  safe  his 
Christians,  his  ships,  and  his  money. 

The  generalisation  of  Havelock  Ellis,  to  the  effect  that 
in  stature  the  man  of  genius  tends  to  one  or  the  other  extreme, 
finds  another  and  a  crashing  exception  in  Dante,  who  was  a 
slender  man  of  only  medium  height.  For  Dante  is  not  merely 
a  poet :  he  is  rather  the  very  spirit  of  poesy  at  its  highest 
and  greatest  incarnate.  Poetry,  which  in  our  day  has  become 
the  transient  foible  of  dejected  undergraduates,  the  happy 
hunting-ground  of  pawky  reviewers,  was  for  him  a  sublime 
Presence  proffering  the  keys  of  the  ultimate  arcana.  The 
familiar  portrait  by  Giotto  of  Dante  in  early  manhood  shows 
us  in  profile  a  face  combining  inexplicably  the  opposed  extremes 
of  virile  strength  and  feminine  refinement.  One  might  call 
it  at  this  moment  a  truly  androgynous  countenance,  but  with 
the  passage  of  years  and  under  stress  of  adversity,  the  look  of 
strength  and  suppressed  passion  became  so  far  predominant  as 
well-nigh  to  obscure  the  gentler  qualities  that  had  formerly 
been  so  evident.  Dante  in  middle  age  is  described  as  a  man  of 
grave  dignity,  somewhat  bent  figure,  with  a  long  face,  prominent 
nose,  large  eyes,  broad  forehead,  wide  chin,  heavy  jaw,  and 
protruded  underlip.  His  hair  and  beard  were  black  and  crisp, 


78  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and  his  complexion  somewhat  swarthy.  Once  as  he  passed  a 
doorway  in  Verona  where  several  women  sat,  he  heard  one 
say  :  "  Do  you  see  the  man  who  goes  down  to  hell,  and  returns 
at  his  pleasure  ?  "  To  which  one  replied  :  "  Indeed,  what  you 
say  must  be  true ;  don't  you  see  how  his  beard  is  crisped  and  his 
colour  darkened  by  the  heat  and  smoke  down  below  ?  "  Dante, 
not  ill-pleased,  smiled  a  little,  and  passed  on  his  way.  Of  his 
manner  there  are  conflicting  accounts  ;  one  biographer  describes 
him  as  courteous  and  calm,  though  reserved,  but  Villani  tells 
us  that  he  was  "  little  gracious,  not  adapting  himself  to  the 
converse  of  the  unlearned."  Probably  he  was  a  man  of  many 
moods,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  extremely  passionate 
in  more  senses  than  one.  We  are,  in  fact,  plainly  told  that 
lustfulness  was  a  besetting  sin  of  Dante,  and  in  the  Purgatorio, 
on  his  first  meeting  withJBeatrice  in  his  pilgrimage,  he  depicts 
himself  as  overwhelmed  with  shame  while  she  upbraids  him 
for  belying  the  gracious  promise  of  his  youth  : 

"  Si  tosto  come  in  sulla  soglia  fui 
Di  mia  seconda  etade,  e  mutai  vita, 
Questi  si  tolse  a  me,  e  diessi  altruL"  l 

Instead  of  valuing  her  more  now  that  she  had  cast  oS  the  dross 
of  earth,  he  had  held  her  less  dear,  followed  "  false  images  of 
good,"  and  condemned  the  warnings  with  which  in  dreams  of 
night  she  strove  to  call  him  back. 

"  Tanto  giu  cadde,  che  tutti  argomenti 
Alia  saluta  sua  eran  gia  corti 
Fuor  che  mostrargli  le  perdu te  gente."2 

Dante's  marriage,  which  took  place  when  he  was  about  thirty- 
three,  was,  Boccaccio  says,  arranged  by  his  friends  to  console 
him  for  the  loss  of  Beatrice.  He  had  four  children  by  her, 
but  left  her  in  Florence  at  the  time  of  his  exile,  some  four  years 

1  "  Soon  as  I  had  reached 
The  threshold  of  my  second  age,  I  changed 
My  mortal  for  immortal ;  then  he  left  me, 

And  gave  himself  to  others." — Purg.  xxx.   126-9  (Gary's  Trans.). 
2  "  Such  depth  he  fell  that  all  device  was  short 
Of  his  preserving,  save  that  he  should  view 
The  children  of  perdition." — Purg.  xxx.  139-41  (Cary's  Trans. ). 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  79 

after  their  marriage,  and  would  never  see  her  again.  He 
seems  to  have  made  conquest  of  a  lady  called  Gentucca  soon 
after  his  condemnation.  The  panther  which  confronts  Dante 
at  the  outset  of  his  journey  through  the  invisible,  symbolises 
lust,  as  the  lion  symbolises  pride  and  the  she-wolf  avarice. 
With  regard  to  the  reputed  death-mask  of  Dante  at  Uffizi  and 
the  three  existing  casts  from  it,  Prof.  C.  E.  Norton  says  :  "  The 
face  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  upon  which  human  eyes  ever 
looked,  for  it  exhibits  in  its  expression  the  conflict  between 
the  strong  nature  of  the  man  and  the  hard  dealings  of  fortune — 
between  the  idea  of  his  life  and  its  practical  experience. 
Strength  is  the  most  striking  attribute  of  the  countenance.  .  .  . 
The  look  is  grave  and  stern  almost  to  grimness  ;  .  .  .  obscured 
under  this  look,  yet  not  lost,  are  the  marks  of  tenderness,  refine- 
ment, and  self-mastery  .  .  .  ineffable  dignity  and  melancholy. 
.  .  .  Neither  weakness  nor  failure  here !  A  strong  soul 
'  buttressed  on  conscience  and  impregnable  will.' ' 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  physiognomy  of  Turner,  who 
was  a  man  of  decidedly  short  stature,  but  of  immense  energy 
and  considerable  strength.  Dance's  portrait,  for  which  Turner 
sat  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  shows  us  a  handsome  young  man 
with  rather  large  features,  a  full  prominent  nose,  staring  bluish 
grey  eyes,  fine  strong  chin  and  rather  sensual  mouth,  the  lower 
lip  fleshy,  the  upper  beautifully  curved.  The  eyebrows  were 
arched,  the  eyelids  long,  presenting  great  depth  between  eye- 
brow and  eye.  The  forehead  was  full  below,  receding  above, 
indicative  perhaps  rather  of  great  power  of  observation  than 
of  high  intellectuality  ;  and,  pace  Ruskin,  there  is  little  doubt 
that  Turner  lacked  the  power  of  clear  thought  or  logical  expres- 
sion. His  mind  was  a  chiaroscuro  of  exalted  incoherencies, 
as  one  glance  through  his  extraordinary  "  poetic  "  effusions 
must  convince  any  impartial  critic.  In  later  life  Turner  became 
the  "  very  moral  "  of  a  master  carpenter,  with  lobster-red  face 
and  twinkling,  watchful  eyes,  usually  attired  in  a  blue  coat  with 
brass  buttons,  and  bearing  an  enormous  umbrella.  His  weather- 
beaten  cuticle  resembled  that  of  a  boatswain  or  a  stage-coachman, 
and  he  had  the  smallest  and  dirtiest  hands  on  record.  Many 
of  the  distinctive  qualities  of  his  art  are  probably  due  to  the 


8o  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

fact  that  he  was  myopic,  and  towards  the  end  of  his  life  he 
became  to  some  extent  colour  blind.1  He  was  a  man  of  coarse 
tastes,  who  drank  heavily,  and,  although  he  never  married,  was 
by  no  means  a  celibate.  He  would  paint  hard  all  the  week  until 
Saturday  night,  then  slip  a  five-pound-note  in  his  pocket, 
button  it  up  securely,  and  set  out  for  some  low  sailors'  tavern 
in  Wapping  or  Rotherhithe,  there  to  wallow  until  Monday 
morning. 

M  Beethoven,  like  Turner,  was  a  man  of  less  than  medium 
stature,  but  of  average  physique.  His  appearance  was  no 
doubt  striking,  but  probably  less  attractive  than  his  familiar 
portrait  suggests,  on  account  of  his  dark  skin  and  the  unkempt 
negligence  of  his  toilet.  He  had  a  flat  broad  nose,  a  rather 
wide  mouth,  small  piercing  bluish  grey  eyes,  and  a  magnificent 
forehead,  surmounted  by  rich  curling  locks  of  blue-black  hair. 
When,  as  often,  Beethoven's  mane  was  uncombed  and  in 
disarray,  he  looked  "  veritably  demoniacal."  Schindler  com- 
pares his  appearance  in  moments  of  inspiration  to  that  of 
Jupiter.  Genius  in  action  invariably  beautifies  its  examplar, 
triumphing  over  the  most  unfavourable  physiognomical  con- 
ditions by  the  sublime  transfiguration  it  effects.  This  no  doubt 
is  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  Beethoven,  despite  of  his 
deafness,  his  uncouth  manners,  and  his  ugliness  (in  the  con- 
ventional sense),  "  often  succeeded  in  making  a  conquest  where 
many  an  Adonis  would  have  found  it  most  difficult  to  gain 
a  hearing."  He  was  evidently  in  a  high  degree  attractive  to 
women.  "  The  truth  is,  "  Dr.  Wegeler  asserts,  "  that  Beeth- 
oven was  always  in  love,  and  generally  with  some  lady  of  high 
rank."  Magdalena  Willmann,  a  beautiful  singer  whom  he 
had  befriended,  whom  subsequently  he  besought  to  marry  him, 
refused  him  "  because  he  was  very  ugly  and  half  crazed."  The 
central  passion  of  his  life  was  probably  that  which  he  felt  to 
his  pupil  Giulietta  Guiccardi,  of  whom  he  writes  to  Ries  : 

1  Liebreich's  theory  is  that  at  fifty-five  Turner  began  to  suffer  from  a  diffuse 
haze  of  the  crystalline  lens,  which  dispersed  the  light  more  strongly  and  threw 
a  bluish  haze  over  illuminated  objects.  Later,  a  definite  opacity  was  formed 
in  the  lens,  causing  a  vertical  diffusion,  the  consequence  being  (after  1833) 
a  peculiar  vertical  striation  of  his  pictures.  Cf.  "  The  Influence  of  Abnor- 
malities of  Vision  on  Art,"  Brit.  Med.  Journ.,  25th  April  1908. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  81 

"  I  found  only  one,  but  I  could  not  have  her."  J  The  fact  is, 
that  Beethoven  was  at  once  peculiarly  susceptible  and  ex- 
tremely fickle,  and  although  at  times  oppressed  by  the  solitude 
of  his  life,  was  upon  the  whole  averse  to  the  sacrifice  of  freedom 
implied  by  marriage,  and  even,  on  general  grounds,  to  the 
institution  itself.  "  If  I  had  given  up  inborn  inspirations  for 
marriage,  what  would  have  become  of  my  higher  better  self  ?  " 
The  typical  artist  is  a  man  of  sentiment  rather  than  of  passion ; 
in  any  one  of  his  many  love  affairs  the  whole  of  his  nature  is  but 
seldom  deeplyinvolved.  The  deafness  of  Beethoven,  which  began 
when  he  was  about  thirty,  gradually  increased,  and  ultimately 
became  complete,  is  apparently  attributable  to  a  severe  wetting 
incurred  during  a  period  of  "  utter  recklessness  of  his  physical 
condition !  "  There  must  have  been  some  hereditary  pre- 
disposition, one  supposes,  although  deafness  is  a  calamity 
only  too  easily  incurred. 

Mozart,  like  Beethoven,  was  below  medium  height,  slender 
in  his  youth,  but  afterwards  rather  stout.  His  well-shaped  head 
was  large  in  proportion  to  his  body,  and  the  concha  of  his  left 
ear  was  congenitally  lacking,  a  peculiarity  transmitted  to  his 
youngest  son.  In  his  boyhood  Mozart  had  a  rosy  chubby 
face,  eyes  of  clear  blue,  profuse  light  brown  hair,  fine  and 
silky.  His  prominent  nose  may  have  indicated  a  Jewish  origin. 
His  temperament  was  bright,  fearless,  and  affectionate ;  he  was, 
by  turn,  gay  and  thoughtful.  At  Vienna,  aged  six,  when 
Marie  Antoinette,  charmed  by  his  playing,  took  him  into  her 
arms,  he  made  her  an  offer  of  marriage.  It  is  also  recorded 
that  on  this  occasion  the  child  genius  frankly  rebuked  the 
Crown  Prince  Joseph  for  his  bad  singing.  I  have  already  ad- 
verted to  the  tendency  to  frequent  pyrexial  attacks,  which 
from  his  boyhood  gave  warning  of  what  was  in  all  probability 
a  tubercular  taint.  I  spoke  just  now  of  the  transfiguring  ill- 
umination which,  in  moments  of  exalted  power,  reveals  the 
presence  of  genius.  An  onlooker  who  was  present  at  the  first 
production  of  Mozart's  Figaro,  received  with  unprecedented 
enthusiasm  by  the  crowded  audience,  writes  thus  of  the  hero 
of  the  occasion :  "I  shall  never  forget  my  impression  of 

1  Possibly,  however,  he  is  referring  here  to  Therese. 

6 


82  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Mozart  as  he  appeared  at  this  moment.  His  little  face  seemed 
lighted  up  by  the  glowing  rays  of  genius — to  describe  it  perfectly 
would  be  as  impossible  as  to  paint  sunbeams."  Towards 
the  end  of  his  life  Mozart  became  the  prey  of  intense  melancholy, 
and  was  obsessed  by  the  idea  that  he  had  been  poisoned — 
traversed  in  part  the  thin  line  dividing  genius  from  insanity. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS— Continued 

Intellectuals — Their    mediocre    physique — Ethico-religious    group — 
Physiognomy  of  Jesus — Examples — Summary. 

PURSUING  the  task  begun  in  the  last  chapter,  I  have  now  to 
discuss  the  physical  characteristics  of  the  intellectual  and 
ethico-religious  groups.  With  regard  to  the  intellectual,  the 
first  point  which  demands  attention  is  that  our  ten  examples 
may  be  divided  into  two  equal  divisions,  the  first  consisting  of 
five  men  whose  physique  and  health  were  moderate  or  good  ; 
and  the  second,  of  five  whose  development  or  constitution,  or 
both,  were  indifferent  or  bad.  The  following  table  embodies 
this  and  some  further  information  : — 


"  \  Galileo. 


I.  Tall,  well  built.    Health  fair  on  the  whole,  but  hypochron-'^ 

driacal  .  .  .  . 

Medium  stature  with  stoop,  slim,  dark.     Healthy  .  Leibnitz. 

Shortish.     Average  physique  and  health  .  .  .  Hegel. 

Short.     Physical  health  good,  and  well  preserved.  .  Newton. 

Very  short,  healthy  and  energetic  .  .  .  Harvey. 

II.  Tall.     Average  physique.     Neurotic         .  .  .  Darwin. 

Medium  stature.     Physique  poor.     Phthisis         .  .  Spinoza. 

Medium  stature.     Always  ailing.     Hypochondriac  .  Bacon. 

Rather  short,  slight  physique.    Large  head,  timid,  weakly  1  _ 

j  .    ,  ,  f  Descartes, 

and  indolent       .  .  .  .  .  .  J 

Very  short  (barely  5  ft.).     Flat  chest.     Stoop.     Hypo-"| 

.        i  .  ,  Kiint. 

chondriac  .  .  .  '.  .  .  J 

Obviously,  there  is  no  member  of  this  group,  with  the  doubt- 
ful exception  of  Galileo,  who  can,  in  the  physical  sense,  bear 
comparison  with  such  splendid  animals  of  the  genus  homo  as 
were  Charlemagne,  Lincoln,  William  the  Silent,  Leonardo, 
Goethe,  Scott,  Flaubert,  not  to  mention  Titian,  Cromwell, 

Caesar,  Napoleon.    Five  of  our  ten  examples — our  nine  rather, 

83 


84  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

for  I  have  no  certain  information  as^to  the  stature  of  Bacon — 
were  distinctly  undersized  men ;  and  of  none  is  it  recorded 
that  he  displayed  exceptional  muscular  power.  Four — Galileo, 
Bacon,  Kant,  and  Darwin — were  hypochondriacal,  or  at  any 
rate  markedly  neurotic  ;  one,  Isaac  Newton,  was  for  a  consider- 
able time  actually  insane.  It  would  almost  seem  that  physical 
mediocrity  (if  not  inferiority)  is  a  necessary  correlative  of  great 
intellectual  power,  for  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  my  ten 
examples  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  typical. 

The  first  of  these,  Galileo,  was  a  man  above  middle  height, 
square-built  and  well-proportioned.  He  had  reddish  hair  and 
a  fair,  sanguine  complexion,  brilliant  eyes  (colour  not  stated), 
and  a  cheerful,  pleasant  expression.  About  1594  (set.  30), 
Galileo  is  stated  to  have  incurred  a  severe  chill  from  sitting  in  a 
draught.  Henceforward  his  health,  naturally  robust,  was 
permanently  impaired  :  he  became  subject  to  acute  pains  in 
the  chest,  back,  and  limbs.,  insomnia.,  anorexia,  and  frequent 
haemorrhages.  Galileo  was  also  the  victim  of  frequent  attacks 
of  hypochondriasis,  aggravated,  if  not  induced,  by  his  nocturnal 
vigils  in  the  interest  of  astronomy.1  He  was  a  man  of  abstemi- 
ous habits,  fastidious  as  to  his  wine — which  was  the  product 
his  own  vineyards — generous,  impulsive,  irascible,  but  easily 
pacified.  His  memory  was  retentive,  stored  with  a  vast 
number  of  old  songs  and  legends,  and  many  of  the  poems 
of  Ariosto,  Petrarca,  and  Berni.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life 
Galileo's  despondency  deepened  to  "  immeasurable  sadness  "  ; 
he  became  hateful  to  himself,  lost  his  sight,  and  suffered  from 
hernia.  As  to  this  last,  there  is  a  sinister  doubt  whether  the 
affliction  was  not  the  result  of  torture — for  there  is  reason  to 
suspect  that  Galileo  was  racked  in  1633,  and  rupture  was  a 
common  result  of  "  the  cord."  At  the  time  of  his  death  (set.  78) 
Galileo  was  engaged  in  considering  with  unimpaired  intellect 
the  nature  of  the  force  of  percussion.  By  his  mistress,  Marina 
Gamba,  he  was  the  father  of  a  son  and  two  daughters. 

Leibnitz,  a  man  of  much  colder  and  more  serene  tempera- 
ment than  Galileo,  was  of  medium  height,  slenderly  built,  with 

1  Not  to  mention  the  brutal  treatment  which  he  underwent  in  his  late  years 
at  the  hands  of  the  Inquisition. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  85 

brown  hair  and  small,  dark,  piercing  eyes.  He  walked  with 
bowed  head  ;  was  kind  and  generous,  but  more  from  principle 
than  emotion  ;  had  an  excellent  memory  ;  was  prudent  in 
money  matters,  and  quite  free  from  sordid  ambition.  Thus, 
when  as  a  young  man  at  Altdorf,  he  was  offered  a  professorship, 
he  declined  it,  shrinking  from  the  defects  and  narrowness  of 
a  German  university  career.  In  this  care  as  to  his  intellectual 
freedom  Leibnitz  resembled  Spinoza.  He  died  at  seventy  of 
gout  and  stone,  his  academical  projects,  desire  for  religious 
unity,  plan  for  a  general  scientific  language,  and  views  as  to  the 
extension  of  geometry,  all  having  ended  in  apparent  failure. 
But  such  is  the  common  fate  of  pioneers. 

More  interesting  details  are  available  with  regard  to  the 
physical  characteristics  and  personality  of  Hegel,  who  was  the 
eldest  son  of  a  methodical  civil  servant  of  Stuttgart.  He  was 
docile  and  industrious  in  his  boyhood,  but  in  early  manhood 
passed  through  a  period  of  mental  fermentation,  and  became 
self-contained  and  moody,  with  a  tendency  to  melancholy 
and  sentiment.  In  the  days  of  his  Berlin  professorate,  held 
from  his  forty-eighth  year  to  his  death,  he  is  described  as  a 
man  of  no  imposing  height  or  charm  of  manner,  "  his  figure 
bent  with  premature  age,  yet  with  a  look  of  native  toughness 
and  strength.  .  .  .  Pale  and  relaxed,  his  features  hung  down 
as  if  lifeless  ;  no  destructive  passion  was  mirrored  in  them, 
but  only  a  long  history  of  patient  thought.  .  .  .  When  his 
mind  awoke  his  features  expressed  all  the  earnestness  and 
strength  of  a  thought  .  .  .  developed  to  completeness.  What 
dignity  lay  in  the  whole  head,  in  the  finely-formed  nose,  the 
high  but  somewhat  retreating  brow,  the  peaceful  chin  !  Ever 
ready  for  talk,  he  sought  rather  to  avoid  than  to  encourage 
scientific  subjects.  Repellent  personalities,  who  were  opposed 
to  the  whole  direction  of  his  efforts,  he  could  not  abide ;  .  .  . 
but  when  friends  gathered  around  him,  what  an  attractive, 
loving  camaraderie  distinguished  him  from  all  others !  .  .  . 
He  was  fond  of  the  society  of  ladies,  .  .  .  the  fairest  were 
always  sure  of  a  sportive  devotion.  ...  At  times  he  took 
pleasure  in  people  of  the  commonest  stamp,  and  even  seemed 
to  cherish  for  them  a  kind  of  good-humoured  preference." 


86  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

To  this  description  by  Hotho  I  will  add  a  picturesque  but 
somewhat  high-flown  impression  by  Kosenkranz,  translated 
by  Ferrier,  of  Hegel  as  lecturer.  "  Utterly  careless  about  the 
graces  of  rhetoric  .  .  .  Hegel  enchained  his  students  by  the 
intensity  of  his  speculative  power.  His  voice  was  in  harmony 
with  his  eye.  It  was  a  great  eye,  but  it  looked  inwards  ;  and 
the  momentary  glances  which  it  threw  outwards  seemed  to 
issue  from  the  very  depths  of  idealism  and  arrested  the  be- 
holder like  a  spell.  His  accent  was  rather  broad,  and  without 
sonorous  ring  ;  but  through  its  apparent  commonness  there 
broke  that  lofty  animation  which  the  might  of  knowledge 
inspires,  which  in  moments  when  the  genius  of  humanity  was 
adjuring  the  audience  through  his  lips,  left  no  hearer  unmoved. 
In  the  sternness  of  his  noble  features  there  was  something 
almost  calculated  to  strike  terror,  had  not  the  hearer  been  again 
propitiated  by  the  gentleness  and  cordiality  of  the  expression. 
A  peculiar  smile  bore  witness  to  the  purest  benevolence,  but  it 
was  blended  with  something  harsh,  cutting,  sorrowful,  or  rather 
ironical.  His,  in  short,  were  the  tragic  lineaments  of  the  philo- 
sopher, of  the  hero  whose  destiny  it  is  to  struggle  with  the 
riddle  of  the  universe." 

Hegel's  death  may  be  considered  accidental.  On  the  10th 
and  llth  November  of  his  sixty-first  year  (1831)  he  had  lectured 
"  with  surprising  fire  and  energy."  On  the  13th  a  virulent 
attack  of  cholera  declared  itself,  to  which  he  succumbed  in 
sleep  on  the  following  day. 

Isaac  Newton,  the  posthumous  son  of  a  father  who  died  at 
thirty-six,  was  born  prematurely,  "so  little  that  they  might  have 
put  him  into  a  pint  mug,"  and  was  not  expected  to  live.  He 
lived,  however,  to  be  eighty-four,  enjoyed  a  vigorous  maturity, 
never  wore  spectacles,  and  lost  only  one  tooth.  He  was  of 
decidedly  short  stature,  and  became  stout  after  middle  life. 
Conduit  describes  him  as  having  a  very  "  lively  and  piercing 
eye,"  but  Bishop  Atterbury  denies  this,  asserting  that  at  any  rate 
during  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  "  his  appearance  was 
rather  languid,  and  did  not  raise  any  great  expectations  in 
strangers."  In  his  fiftieth  year  (1692)  Newton  suffered  a  severe 
shock.  A  dog  upset  a  lighted  taper,  and  manuscripts  embodying 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  87 

the  results  of  many  years'  experiments  in  optics  were  consumed. 
Newton's  mind  certainly  became  seriously  deranged,  and  it  is 
asserted,  though  Brewster  denies  this,  that  he  was  placed  under 
restraint  by  his  friends.  At  any  rate,  in  1693,  Newton,  in  an 
incoherent  letter,  complained  to  Pepys  of  insomnia  and  mental 
disturbance  ;  and  about  the  same  time,  in  another  extraordinary 
epistle  addressed  to  Locke,  called  that  worthy  man  a  "  Hobbist," 
accused  him  of  wishing  to  embroil  him  with  women,  and  wished 
him  dead.  After  his  recovery,  Newton  was,  in  1695,  appointed 
Master  of  the  Mint.  He  discharged  his  duties  efficiently,  but 
made  no  more  discoveries  of  any  moment.  So  that,  if  in  the 
matter  of  physical  health  (as  commonly  understood)  Newton 
appears  exceptional  among  intellectuals,  it  is  evident  that  there 
are  serious  qualifications  to  be  made.  His  death  was  due  to 
stone,  whether  of  the  bladder  or  kidney  I  am  unable  to  say.  His 
portrait  by  Kneller  shows  a  man  of  good  features,  with  wide 
forehead,  rather  large  eyes,  well-defined  eyebrows,  straight 
nose,  benevolent  mouth,  square  chin,  and  plump,  shapely 
hands.  Serenity  is  here  the  prevailing  expression. 

We  have  next  to  consider  the  case  of  William  Harvey,  who 
is  in  several  respects  an  exception  to  the  class  to  which,  never- 
theless, upon  the  whole  he  undoubtedly  belongs.  Although  his 
treatise  De  Motu  Cordis  et  Sanguinis  is  a  perfect  model  of  close 
reasoning  from  the  products  of  keenest  observation,  and  in  its 
way  a  classic,  I  do  not  consider  that  Harvey  was  in  the  highest 
sense  an  intellectual  man.  His  discovery  was  an  epoch-making 
one,  no  doubt,  and  no  praise  can  be  too  high  for  the  acumen 
which  interpreted  anatomical  facts  at  once  universally  known 
and  universally  misunderstood  by  his  predecessors  and  con- 
temporaries, to  say  nothing  of  the  bull-dog  tenacity  and  un- 
flinching courage  which  enabled  him  to  meet  and  conquer 
the  inevitable  opposition  of  officialdom.  Harvey  was,  in  short, 
a  man  of  genius,  but  of  a  genius  distinctly  specialised,  if  not 
narrow  ;  and  his  efficiency  as  a  pioneer  was  in  large  measure  due 
to  the  stubborn  energy  with  which  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
exploitation  of  a  single  illuminating  conception.  If,  therefore, 
Harvey  compares  favourably  in  the  matter  of  health  with  the 
majority  of  intellectuals,  the  limitations  of  his  genius  are  to  be 


88  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

borne  in  mind.  The  following  is  a  description  of  him  at  the  age 
of  thirty-seven  :  "  A  man  of  the  lowest  stature,  round-faced,  with 
a  complexion  like  the  wainscot ;  his  eyes  small,  round,  very 
black  and  full  of  spirit ;  his  hair  black  as  a  raven  and  curling ; 
rapid  in  his  utterance,  choleric,  given  to  gesture,  and  used  when 
in  discourse  with  any  one  to  play  unconsciously  with  the  handle 
of  a  small  dagger  he  wore  at  his  side." 

Harvey  married,  at  twenty-six,  Elizabeth  Brown,  aged 
twenty-four.  His  wife  was  still  alive  forty-one  years  later, 
but,  significantly  enough,  the  union  had  been  childless.  Was 
this,  perhaps,  another  instance  of  the  sterility  of  genius  ? 
Although  Harvey  lived  to  be  seventy-nine,  and,  apart  from 
what  might  perhaps  be  called  a  healthy  tendency  to  typical 
gouty  arthritis,  was  a  physically  sound  man,  he  seems  to  have 
been  eccentric  to  a  somewhat  marked  extent.  To  cure  a  gouty 
attack  he  would  sit  bare-legged  in  frost  on  the  leads  of  Cockaine 
House,  soak  his  feet  in  cold  water,  then  betake  himself  to  the 
stove,  "  and  so  'twas  gone."  His  salt-cellar  was  always  full 
of  sugar.  He  combed  his  hair  in  the  fields.  He  had  caves 
made  in  the  ground  for  summer  meditation  at  Combe,  and 
loved  to  ruminate  in  the  dark.  There  was  method  in  much 
of  his  madness  (so  to  speak) — as  in  the  habit  of  pacing  the 
bedroom  in  his  shirt  when  unable  to  sleep,  a  plan  often  recom- 
mended in  these  days  for  insomnia,  and  sometimes  effectual 
enough. 

It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  describe  in  much  detail  the 
physiognomy  of  Darwin,  at  least  in  his  later  years.  Every  one 
knows  the  gentle,  humorous  face,  with  its  high,  deeply-furrowed 
forehead,  bushy  eyebrows,  overarching  keen  bluish  grey  eyes, 
rough-hewed  moustache,  and  ragged  white  beard.  The  some- 
what shapeless  or  "  bottle "  nose  deserves  mention,  as  the 
feature  to  which  Fitz-Koy  of  the  Beagle  took  serious  excep- 
tion at  the  time  of  Darwin's  candidature  for  the  post  of  natural- 
ist to  the  expedition.  This  ardent  disciple  of  Lavater  doubted 
whether  any  one  with  a  nose  like  Darwin's  could  have  energy 
and  determination  for  the  duties  of  such  a  post.  "  But  I  think 
he  was  afterwards  well  satisfied  that  my  nose  had  spoken 
falsely."  Darwin  was  a  tall,  stooping  man  of  six  feet,  with 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  89 

shoulders  neither  broad  nor  distinctly  narrow.  In  his  youth 
he  was  active  rather  than  strong,  but  capable  of  great  endurance. 
He  was  awkward  in  the  use  of  his  hands,  never  became  a  real 
dissector  or  excelled  in  anything  requiring  delicate  manipula- 
tion. He  used  his  hands  freely  in  gesticulation  when  his  talk 
became  animated.  What  was  very  exceptional  in  Darwin 
was  his  marvellous  power  of  observation.  He  was  a  wonderful 
shot,  and  in  his  early  days  the  love  of  sport  was  a  veritable 
passion.  In  his  walks  he  never  missed  seeing  a  bird's  nest  if 
there  was  one  to  be  seen — a  sure  test  of  the  keenness  of  vision. 
But  his  health  after  early  middle  life  was  feeble  in  the  extreme. 
He  was  apparently  dyspeptic  and  neurasthenic,  if  not  in  some 
degree  (unselfishly)  hypochondriacal.  His  son  emphatically 
asserts  that  for  forty  years  Darwin  never  knew  one  day  of  the 
health  of  ordinary  men.  His  life  was  one  long  struggle  against 
the  weariness  and  strain  of  sickness.  "  I  never,"  he  says 
himself,  "  pass  one  day  without  many  hours  of  discomfort,  when 
I  can  do  nothing  whatever."  Yet  he  lived  to  be  seventy- three, 
was  the  father  of  a  family,  and,  by  dint  of  rigid  economy  in 
regard  to  his  physical  resources,  accomplished  a  body  of  work 
which,  to  say  nothing  of  its  quality,  is  astonishing  in  the  matter 
of  mere  bulk. 

Spinoza,  who  died  of  phthisis  at  forty-five,  looked  what 
he  was  by  birth,  a  Portuguese  Jew.  He  was  of  middle  size, 
had  good  features  in  his  face,  the  skin  somewhat  swarthy, 
curling  black  hair,  long  black  eyebrows.  He  was  intensely 
reserved,  a  man  of  recluse  habit,  and  abstemious  in  the  matter 
of  dietary  to  the  point  of  asceticism.  For  example,  he  has 
been  known  to  subsist  for  a  whole  day  upon  a  little  gruel,  or 
upon  a  milk  sop  and  a  pot  of  beer.  The  motive  for  this  frugality 
was  presumably  a  horror  of  debt,  but  it  probably  shortened 
his  life. 

Of  Bacon's  physical  characteristics  I  can  offer  but  an 
imperfect  account.  The  portraits  give  an  impression  of  decided 
beauty — showing  a  very  high  well-shaped  forehead,  finely 
arched  eyebrows,  dark  but  not  large  eyes,  aquiline  nose,  full 
under  lip,  short  beard,  and  curling  dark  hair.  He  married 
at  forty-five,  but  the  union,  which  was  childless,  was  not  dictated 


go  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

by  passion,  for,  pace  the  amusing  folk  who  regard  Bacon  as  a 
poet,  a  more  passionless  man  never  lived.  With  regard 
to  his  health,  D'Arcy  Power  asserts,  I  know  not  on  whose 
authority,  that  he  was  always  a  weak  and  ailing  man,  and 
something  of  a  hypochondriac.  He  died  at  sixty-five,  of 
bronchitis. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  typical  example  of  the 
intellectual  genius  than  we  have  in  the  philosopher  and  mathe- 
matician, Rene  Descartes.  For,  in  the  intellectual  sphere, 
mathematics  holds  a  position  very  analogous  to  that  of  music 
in  the  arts.  Mathematical  facility  is  a  thing  inborn  and  sui 
generis  :  it  cannot  be  acquired,  only  developed,  by  toil.  Some- 
thing more,  that  universality  of  mind  and  constructive  power 
which  go  to  the  making  of  the  philosopher,  is  no  doubt  necessary 
to  the  highest  order  of  intellectuality,  and  that  something 
Descartes  possessed.  But  in  all  his  philosophising  he  remained 
fundamentally  a  mathematician,  one  whose  facility  in  the 
rapid  solution  of  the  most  abstruse  problems,  and,  what  is 
more,  the  determination  of  the  possibility  or  formal  conditions 
of  solution,  were  the  wonder  of  his  contemporaries.  Let  us 
therefore  consider  with  special  attention  the  physical  attributes 
recorded  of  Descartes.  He  was  the  youngest  of  three  children, 
and  his  mother,  who  was  consumptive,  died  soon  after  his 
birth.  As  a  boy  he  was  pale  and  sickly,  and  had  a  constant 
dry  cough — was,  in  fact,  more  or  less  infected  by  the  same 
disease.  All  his  life  he  had  the  habit  of  spending  the  forenoon 
in  bed,  under  which  conditions,  he  alleged,  his  best  work  was 
always  done.  He  never  married,  but  had  one  illegitimate 
daughter,  who  only  lived  five  years.  In  person  Descartes  was 
undersized,  but  with  a  head  somewhat  large  in  proportion  to  his 
body.  His  complexion  was  sallow.  He  was  careful  with  regard 
to  his  toilet,  dressed  usually  in  black,  and  his  diet  was  plain  and 
methodical.  Such  was  Descartes,  mathematician  par  excellence; 
and  it  is  instructive  to  note  the  points  of  resemblance  or  analogy 
between  his  case  and  that  of  Mozart,  the  typical  musician. 

How  many,  I  wonder,  of  the  cultured  gentlemen  who 
in  learned  monographs  invoke  or  conjure  with  the  mighty 
name  of  the  Sage  of  Konigsberg,  "  that  arch-destroyer  in 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  91 

the  realms  of  thought,"  Immamiel  Kant,  have  ever  clearly 
realised  the  physical  insignificance  of  their  hero  ?  How  many — 
how  few,  rather — if  they  encountered  in  the  flesh  a  puny  manikin 
barely  five  feet  high,  pigeon-chested,  one  shoulder  higher  than 
its  fellow,  if  they  listened  to  the  medical  talk  dear  to  Kant, 
as  to  every  valetudinarian,  his  expatiation  on  the  virtues  of 
"  nose-breathing,"  dietetic  fads,  and  so  forth,  would  recognise 
in  such  a  caricature  of  humanity  one  acclaimed  by  contem- 
poraries as  a  "  second  Messias,"  the  author  of  a  book  esteemed 
by  a  critic  of  genius  the  greatest  ever  written  by  man.1  Let 
no  one  accuse  me  of  undue  gloating  over  the  fact  that  the 
great  Kant  was  a  pygmy.  The  interests  of  Truth  are  supreme  ; 
and  it  is  by  no  means  a  negligible  fact  that  an  intellectual 
giant  may  be,  in  physical  aspect,  contemptible.  Prudence, 
however,  forbids  me  to  state  how  many  fine,  healthy  barbarians 
I  would  cheerfully  sacrifice  to  preserve  unscathed  every  hair 
on  the  head  of  such  a  pygmy.  Kant  had  several  mild  but 
abortive  love  episodes,  one  for  a  prepossessing  young  widow, 
who,  while  the  too  cautious  philosopher — there  was  a  strain 
of  Caledonian  blood  in  him,  we  know — calculated  and  wavered, 
left  Konigsberg  and  married  a  more  ardent  suitor.  His  celibacy 
was  rather  a  sore  subject  with  him,  but  no  doubt  it  was  a  part 
of  his  true  vocation.  At  seventy-three  he  began  to  lose  his 
memory.  Two  years  later  he  became  the  subject  of  de- 
lusions ;  gradually  wasted  to  a  mere  skeleton,  and  died  at 
eighty. 

We  have  now  only  to  consider  the  physical  characteristics 
of  the  ethico -religious  type  of  personality,  and  briefly  to  sum- 
marise the  main  results  of  this  preliminary  inquiry,  before 
finding  ourselves  free  to  enter  with  a  good  conscience  upon 
the  psychological  problems  which  are  to  be  our  main  concern. 
Of  the  ten  personalities  representative  of  my  fourth  category, 
three,  however,  may  be  dismissed  very  briefly.  As  to  the 
physique  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  my  chief  authorities  (Renan  and 
Pater)  give  no  information  beyond  the  expression  of  a  belief 
that  his  health  was  not  good,  that  he  suffered  from  severe 
migraine,  and  that  his  vision  failed  towards  the  end  of  his  life. 
1  Otto  Weininger,  re  The  Critique  of  Practical  Season. 


92  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

He  died,  at  or  about  sixty,  of  some  kind  of  camp  fever.  Of 
Augustine's  physique  and  physiognomy  I  have  obtained  no 
trustworthy  account.  He  lived  to  be  seventy-six,  but  I  cannot 
picture  him  as  a  man  of  imposing  appearance,  except  inasmuch 
as  his  features  and  expression  combined  the  charms  of  a  tempera- 
ment at  the  same  time  sensuous  and  intellectual.  With  regard 
to  the  physical  characteristics  of  Jesus,  it  is  obviously  unsafe, 
and  therefore,  for  our  present  purpose,  unjustifiable  to  venture 
an  opinion.  Renan,  indeed,  hazards  the  guess  that  his  infinite 
attraction  was  in  some  degree  the  effect  of  "  one  of  those  lovely 
faces  which  sometimes  appear  in  the  Jewish  race."  On  the 
other  hand,  the  early  tradition,  attributable  very  likely  to  a 
desire  to  find  confirmation  of  a  certain  assumed  prophetic 
description,  was  to  the  effect  that  the^appearance  of  Jesus 
was  the  reverse  of  pleasing.  As  to  the  familiar  art-conception 
of  the  Christ,  that,  no  doubt,  though  obviously  in  some  degree 
an  ideal  construction,  may  well  be  in  great  measure  authentic. 
But  it  may  equally  well  be  in  its  entirety  fallacious,  and  cannot 
possibly  be  used  as  one  of  the  bases  of  any  attempt  at  inductive 
generalisation  upon  the  type  to  which  its  subject  belongs. 
The  same  instinct  which  makes  the  savage  choose,  for  the 
predestined  victim  of  sacrifice,  and  for  brief  personification  of 
his  deity,  the  most  perfect  specimen  of  his  tribe,  has  quite 
probably  been  at  work  in  the  determination  of  the  "  ideal " 
features  of  the  Saviour. 

For  my  own  part  I  find  very  few  of  the  world-famous  repre- 
sentations of  Jesus  humanly  satisfying.  One  of  the  finest  is 
in  Titian's  painting  of  the  episode  of  the  tribute  money — or 
so  I  think  it.  Intensity  and  depth  are  incompatible  with  dis- 
tinctly fair  hair  and  complexion,  yet  Jesus  is  commonly  por- 
trayed as  a  fair  man.  I  imagine  him  as  olive-skinned,  with 
dark  grey  or  brown  eyes,  dark  brown  or  black  hair,  and  strongly 
marked  features.  I  much  doubt  the  possession  by  him  of 
"  beauty  "  in  the  commonly  accepted  sense.  Self -dominance  is 
a  central  note  in  the  character,  as  I  conceive  it,  and,  in  a  strong 
temperament,  is  won  by  such  tension  of  will  as  cannot  but 
enforce  the  features  of  mere  comeliness  to  a  more  virile  and 
awe-compelling  contour.  The  following  is  a  tabular  statement 


CHRIST   AND   THE   TRIBUTE    MONEY. 
From  a  painting  !>y  Titian. 


To  face  p.  gz. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  93 

of  the  chief  bodily  characteristics  of  our  seven  remaining  per- 
sonalities : — 

Tall,  slight,  with  stoop.     Fair  health    ....  Emerson. 

Medium  stature,  robust.     Epilepsy  (?).  .  .  .  Mahomet. 

Medium  stature,  robust.     Hallucinations          .  .  .  Luther. 

Medium  stature.     Health  moderate       ....  Gregory. 

Short  and  thick-set        ......  Paul. 

Short  and  thick-set.     Health  moderate.  .  .  .  Renan. 

Very  short.     Frail  physique.     Phthisis.  .  .  .  Francis. 

Here,  more  even  than  in  the  case  of  the  intellectuals,  physical 
mediocrity,  or  indeed  inferiority,  is,  I  think,  the  prevailing 
note.  Emerson,  though  healthy  in  his  way,  could  hardly  be 
called  a  fine  man.  Luther  while  in  retreat  at  the  Wartburg, 
suffered  from  hallucinations.  Gregory  was  tormented  con- 
tinuously for  many  years  by  gout  in  its  most  agonising  form  ; 
Paul  suffered  from  a  mysterious  "  thorn  in  the  flesh  "  ;  Renan, 
from  neuralgia  and  cardiac  weakness ;  Francis  d'Assisi,  from 
consumption.  Certainly  these  men,  endowed  with  such  price- 
less gifts  for  our  behoof,  did  not  buy  them  in  a  cheap  market. 
But  we  will  descend  once  more  to  particulars. 

Emerson's  tall,  stooping  figure  was  crowned  by  a  head  of 
good  shape ;  the  face  was  narrow,  the  features  aquiline ;  the 
brow  not  very  high,  but  finely  moulded  ;  the  eyes  intensely  blue, 
deep  set ;  the  mouth  firm  but  sensitive  ;  the  expression  at  once 
enthusiastic  and  shrewdly  benevolent.  He  seems  to  have 
possessed  a  peculiarly  magnetic  personality.  C.  J.  Woodbury, 
in  the  course  of  some  reminiscences,  calls  attention  to  the  fact. 
"  There  was,"  he  says,  "  something  catching  about  him.  No 
one  could  exactly  explain  or  even  understand  it,  but  every  one 
was  sensible  of  it.  Nor  was  it  well  to  be  loved  by  him  too 
dearly.  .  .  .  The  fact  is,  no  one,  meeting  Emerson,  was  ever 
the  same  again.  His  natural  force  was  so  resistless  and  so 
imperceptible  that  it  commanded  men  before  they  were  aware." 
Haskins  confirms  this  observation.  Thoreau's  manner,  after  his 
residence  with  Emerson,  startlingly  recalled  that  of  his  host. 
Mahomet  was  a  man  of  medium  stature,  square  built  and  sinewy. 
He  had  large  hands  and  feet ;  was  very  strong  in  his  youth, 
corpulent  in  later  life.  His  head  was  large  and  shapely ;  he 


94  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

had  a  broad  forehead,  oval  face,  ruddy  complexion,  aquiline 
nose,  well-marked  arched  eyebrows,  black  eyes  and  hair.  His 
mouth  was  large,  his  teeth  very  white,  and  he  wore  a  full  beard. 
His  deportment  was  calm,  usually  grave,  but  sometimes  jocose. 
He  was  an  attractive  personality,  very  successful  with  women, 
and  very  susceptible  to  their  charms,  and  his  smile  was  of 
captivating  sweetness.  He  was  scrupulously  clean,  frugal  in 
regard  to  diet,  affected  the  use  of  perfumes,  and  in  disposition 
was  kind  but  passionate.  In  his  middle  age  Mahomet  became 
subject  to  dreams,  ecstasies,  and  "  trances,"  the  last  possibly 
an  euphemistic  title  for  epileptic  seizures.  Of  the  children 
born  to  him  by  his  many  wives,  all  proved  short-lived.  He 
lived  to  be  sixty-three,  and  his  last  illness  was  apparently  of 
a  cerebral  nature,  being  attended  with  vertigo,  headache,  and 
delirium. 

Luther  was  a  man  of  average  height,  somewhat  broad 
shouldered  and  clumsy  in  build.  Mosellanus,  who  saw  him  at 
Leipsic  (aged  thirty-six)  at  the  time  of  his  disputation  with 
Eck,  describes  him  as  "  so  wasted  by  care  that  all  his  bones 
may  be  counted."  This  emaciation  was  no  doubt  due  to 
special  causes,  and  was  not  permanent.  His  features,  as 
depicted  in  Cranach's  many  portraits,  are  pronounced,  irregular, 
and  distinctly  suggestive  of  his  plebeian  origin.  In  some,  the 
face  appears  wasted  by  anxiety,  but  in  others,  perhaps  the 
majority,  it  is  full,  somewhat  heavy  below  the  eyes,  and  con- 
veys the  impression  of  a  passionate  rather  than  an  intellectual 
or  poetic  nature.  The  hair  is  black  ;  the  forehead  not  very 
large  ;  the  eyebrows  marked  ;  the  nose  thickish  and  prominent ; 
the  upper  lip  well  removed  from  the  nose  ;  the  mouth  humorous 
and  eloquent,  but  far  from  beautiful ;  the  chin  strong,  and  the 
neck  short  and  fleshy.  Of  Luther's  dark,  deep-set  eyes,  which 
revealed  his  genius,  Kessler  says  that  they  "  twinkled  and 
sparkled  like  stars,  so  that  no  one  could  hardly  look  steadily 
at  them."  By  others  they  were  compared  to  the  eyes  of  a 
lion  or  a  falcon.  Luther's  gait l  was  peculiarly  characteristic, 
and  far  from  typical  of  the  monk  or  scholar.  He  carried 
himself  so  upright  that  he  seemed  to  lean  backwards  (having 
1  As  observed  by  Kessler  in  1522. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  95 

become  rather  stout,1  and  his  face  was  upturned  towards 
the  sky.  From  his  earliest  years  Luther  was  subject  to  fits 
of  depression,  verging  upon  religious  melancholia,  and,  as  I 
have  already  stated,  was  at  one  time  the  victim  of  hallucina- 
tions, both  auditory  and  visual.  He  suffered  severely  from 
gout  and  stone,  also  from  cardiac  oppression  and  vertigo.  His 
reproductive  powers  were  quite  normal.  His  life-period  (sixty- 
three  years)  is,  like  Mahomet's,  characteristic  of  the  man  of 
action,  which  in  many  respects  he  was,  rather  than  of  the 
thinker.  Such,  too — curiously  enough — was  the  case  with  our 
next  example,  Gregory  the  Great,  who  lived  sixty-four  years, 
and  was,  of  course,  a  statesman  of  the  highest  rank  in  addition 
to  being  a  man  of  genuine  sanctity.  He  was  of  average  height, 
well-shaped,  and  had  slender,  graceful  hands.  His  face  com- 
bined the  length  of  his  father's  and  the  fulness  of  his  mother's. 
He  had  a  handsome  forehead ;  greenish  eyes,  not  large  ;  full, 
ruddy  lips  ;  a  projecting  chin,  sallow  complexion,  scanty  beard, 
and  bald  crown.  I  believe  there  is  truth  in  the  observation  I 
have  read,  that  men  of  cool  temperament  are  apt  to  have  a  thin 
growth  of  hair,  and  the  converse  combination  is  frequent  also. 
Gregory's  expression  was  gentle ;  his  manners  were  mild 
and  conciliatory.  He  was  liable  to  attacks  of  the  gout,  con- 
cerning which  his  own  account  is,  "  I  know  not  what  fire  spreads 
itself  over  my  whole  body."  His  health  seems  to  have  been 
undermined  by  his  asceticism  in  early  manhood,  when  he  lived 
on  a  little  pulse,  and  became  so  weak  that  he  became  subject 
to  syncope  of  alarming  severity.  For  two  whole  years  (when 
he  was  about  sixty)  the  gout  kept  him  constantly  in  bed. 
"  Sometimes  the  pain  is  moderate,  sometimes  excessive  ;  but  it 
is  never  so  moderate  as  to  leave  me,  nor  so  excessive  as  to  kill 
me."  It  did  kill  him,  ultimately. 

St.  Paul  is  described  by  Renan  as  ugly,  short,  thick-set, 
and  stooping.  He  had  broad  shoulders,  bearing  a  diminutive 
bald  head.  His  wan  face  was  invaded  by  a  thick,  dark  beard  ; 
he  had  an  aquiline  nose,  beetling  black  eyebrows,  and  piercing 
eyes.  His  manners  were  exquisite,  but  in  speech  he  was 

1  Such  a  bearing  is  considered  by  Mantegazza  indicative  of  an  arrogant, 
domineering,  and  ambitious  nature. 


96  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

hesitant  and  timid.  By  temperament  lie  was  passionate  and 
impulsive,  a  man  who  did  nothing  by  halves.  During  his 
residence  in  Galatea,  from  about  his  thirty-sixth  to  fortieth 
year,  Paul  seems  to  have  been  afflicted  with  attacks  of  weak- 
ness, or  of  the  unknown  malady  to  which  he  refers.  His  lasting 
preference  for  the  Galatean  churches  was  no  doubt  in  a  measure 
due  to  the  tenderness  with  which  he  was  cared  for  by  his  devoted 
proselytes  during  this  time  of  sickness.  There  is  little  doubt 
that  his  constitution  was  unhealthy,  but  as  he  is  traditionally 
held  to  have  suffered  martyrdom  under  Nero  (aet.  54  or  56), 
we  can  draw  no  safe  conclusions  on  the  score  of  longevity  or 
the  reverse. 

Ernest  Renan  was  a  little,  short-limbed  man,  with  heavy, 
sloping  shoulders  carrying  a  huge  head.  His  features  were 
large,  the  mouth  sensitive  though  wide,  the  nose  prominent 
and  fleshy,  the  chin  shapely  and  indented.  The  eyes  were 
small  and  had  a  peering  look — their  colour  I  do  not  know. 
The  shape  of  the  face  in  youth  and  early  manhood  was  oval ; 
after  middle  life  it  became  somewhat  full  and  puffy.  Renan 
enjoyed  fair  health  up  to  the  time  of  his  Syrian  expedition. 
There,  on  the  point  of  leaving,  he  and  his  sister  were  attacked 
by  fever,  of  which  the  latter  died.  Renan,  who  was  then 
thirty-seven,  recovered,  but  was  never  the  same  again.  He 
became  subject  to  rheumatism,  to  heart  trouble,  and  to 
neuralgia  of  torturing  severity.  At  fifty-two  he  was  pre- 
maturely aged,  though  he  lived  on  until  his  sixty-ninth  year. 
He  was  the  father  of  two  children,  of  whom  one  died  in  infancy. 
He  was  bashful,  but,  when  at  his  ease,  could  talk  fluently  and 
clearly.  His  manners  had  the  gentle  charm  of  the  best  type 
of  Catholic  clergy.  Of  the  facile  give-and-take  of  the  ready 
talker,  he  was,  according  to  Madame  Darmesteter,  utterly 
devoid.  Nor  did  he  affect  epigram,  although  the  strong  vein 
of  irony  so  frequent  in  the  writings  of  his  later  period  must 
sometimes,  one  imagines,  have  made  itself  slyly  evident  in  his 
talk. 

Concerning  Francis  d'Assisi  I  have  not  much  to  add  to  the 
particulars  already  given.  He  was  of  short  stature,  slim, 
graceful,  dainty — before  his  conversion — in  dress  and  habit. 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  97 

His  personality  had,  by  all  accounts,  a  singular  charm,  by 
reason  of  his  gay  vivacity  and  gift  of  song,  and  in  the  days 
of  his  early  manhood  he  was  the  central  figure  of  a  group  of 
pleasure-seekers  of  the  jeunesse  doree  in  his  native  town.  But 
there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  at  this  time  his  personal 
conduct  was  in  any  way  gross  or  vicious.  He  seems  from 
the  first  to  have  had  a  sense  of  high  destiny,  and  there  is  evidence 
that  this  instinct  was  not  peculiar  to  himself.  A  man  accounted 
a  character  in  Assisi  was  in  the  habit  of  spreading  his  mantle 
for  young  Francis  to  tread  upon,  bidding  men  note  him  as  a 
youth  called  to  greatness.  When  he  was  about  twenty-one, 
he,  with  many  other  Assisans,  was  captured  by  a  force  led 
by  Count  Girardo  di  Gislerio.  A  year's  endurance  of 
prison  fare  and  monotony  debilitated  and  demoralised  him 
to  a  considerable  extent ;  and  after  his  release  he  seems  to  have 
fallen  into  evil  ways.  Then  followed  a  long  and  very  serious 
illness,  which  was  perhaps  the  turning-point  of  his  career. 
The  physical  element  of  his  charm  was  probably  ephemeral, 
for  we  read  of  him  in  the  days  of  his  sanctity  as  "  a  man  despic- 
able and  small  of  body,  and  esteemed,  therefore,  a  vile  mendicant 
by  many  who  knew  him  not."  At  about  forty-five,  old  age 
descended  suddenly  upon  him  :  he  became  purblind,  and  suffered 
from  sickness  and  haemoptysis.  The  majority  of  extant  por- 
traits represent  him  with  a  face  of  delicate  oval  contour  and 
refined  features,  the  forehead  rather  broad  than  high. 

The  facts  dealt  with  in  this  and  the  preceding  chapter  are 
of  so  heterogeneous  a  kind  that  any  attempt  as  a  complete 
summary  must  prove  futile.  The  general  result  seems,  however, 
to  be  to  the  effect  that,  physically  speaking,  the  man  of  action 
and  the  artist  have  the  advantage  of  the  intellectual  and  the 
ethico-religious  man  in  almost  all  respects.  In  stature,  at 
least,  the  artist  quite  holds  his  own  with  the  man  of  action ; 
probably  in  energy  and  strength  he  is  somewhat  his  inferior, 
though  I  am  not  quite  certain  of  this.  The  intellectual  man 
is,  on  the  average,  of  mediocre  or  inferior  stature,  physique,  and 
health,  and  the  ethico-religious  man  also.  As  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  these  facts,  one  may  venture  this  much,  at  least, 
that  they  seem  to  indicate,  not  perhaps  the  complete  incom- 
7 


98  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

patibility,  bat  at  all  events  a  certain  degree  of  antagonism, 
between  the  highest  mental  and  spiritual  endowments  on  the 
one  side,  and  a  great  degree  of  bodily  development  in  regard 
to  size,  health,  or  vigour  on  the  other.  It  seems  as  though  the 
relation  of  the  brain  to  the  organism  in  general  were  in  such 
cases  of  a  quasi-parasitic  nature,  as  if  the  one  organ  fed  upon 
and  developed  itself  at  the  expense  of  all  the  others.  The 
extreme  longevity  of  the  intellectual  class  does  indeed  suggest, 
that  what  the  brain  abstracts  in  the  way  of  muscular  and 
animal  vigour,  it  in  part  compensates  by  enhanced  resisting 
power  of  some  kind,  perhaps  due  to  a  regulative  unifying 
control  of  the  diverse  functions,  perhaps  to  the  fortifying  con- 
tribution of  some  internal  secretion.  Coarsely  put,  it  amounts 
in  short  to  this,  that  while,  in  a  sense,  intellectual  toil  tends  to 
cripple  a  man  in  regard  to  every -day  activities,  it  also  tends 
to  keep  him  alive  longer  than  his  mental  inferiors. 

One  further  point  concerning  the  physiognomy  of  great 
men  I  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  illustrate.  This  is  the 
strength  of  the  impression  made  by  the  personalities  of  so  many 
of  them  upon  their  associates,  the  evident  sense  of  them  as 
beings  in  some  way  set  apart  by  fate  as  exceptional,  predestined. 
Sometimes  it  makes  itself  felt  as  a  dominating  power,  a  mag- 
netic emanation,  subduing  or  enthralling  the  will,  sometimes 
as  a  mere  charm  of  irresistible  sweetness  ;  in  other  cases  the 
mystery  of  inspiration  transfigures  a  poet's  or  composer's 
face,  suggests  to  the  beholder  an  ineffable  source.  It  does 
not  always  coexist  with  a  powerful  physique,  witness  the 
examples  of  Richelieu,  Nelson,  St.  Francis.  In  one  form  or 
another  we  have  discovered  testimony  to  its  reality  and  power  in 
the  cases  also  of  William  the  Silent,  Lincoln,  Frederick,  Napoleon, 
Leonardo,  Goethe,  Flaubert,  Scott,  Cervantes,  Dante,  Beethoven, 
Mozart,  Hegel,  Emerson,  Mahomet,  Luther — practically  in 
fifty  per  cent,  of  the  personalities  under  consideration.  This 
is  a  fact  in  the  natural  history  of  human  greatness  as  well 
worthy  of  attention  as  any  other — even  the  most  prosaic. 
That  men  discover  or  believe  themselves  to  discover  in  certain 
individuals  a  something  magical,  inexplicable,  awful — is,  I 
believe,  a  perfectly  verifiable  proposition.  It  is  just  this 


PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS  99 

element  which  we  shall  probably  seek  in  vain  to  account  for 
genealogically,  for  though  its  potentiality  is  obviously  inborn, 
it  does  not  seem  to  be  inherited.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  incalculable 
element  called  genius,  revealed  by  look  or  gesture,  appraised 
by  instinct,  but  unmistakable  enough,  in  many  cases,  at  least. 
Least  so,  it  would  appear,  by  my  evidence,  in  the  case  of  in- 
tellectual initiative,  though  that  may  be  in  part  due  to  the 
comparative  neglect  of  any  close  or  loving  study  of  the  lives 
of  men  belonging  to  this  type.  Those  who  are  sceptical  on 
the  point  of  the  possession  by  genius  of  a  characteristic  physi- 
ognomy, at  once  indescribable  and  yet  perfectly  self-substanti- 
ating, should  compare  almost  any  portrait  of  Napoleon  with 
those  of  his  brothers  Louis  and  Joseph.  It  is  difficult  to  decide 
which  is  the  more  startling — the  close  resemblance  of  separate 
features,  or  the  absolute  qualitative  difference  of  general 
impression  conveyed.  Nor  can  this  difference  be  waived  as 
the  effect  of  mere  idealisation.  The  brothers  of  Napoleon, 
at  the  time  when  their  portraits  were  painted,  occupied  positions 
exalted  enough  to  provide  ample  motive  to  any  artist  to  make 
the  best  of  his  subject.  The  lives  of  the  three  men  afford  abund- 
ant evidence  that  in  one  of  them  inhered  a  daimonic  element 
denied  to  the  others.  Why,  then,  should  we  be  in  any  way 
surprised  that  their  portraits  tell  the  same  tale  ?  Lavater 
believed  that  the  eye  of  a  man  of  genius  has  emanations,  that 
the  rays  of  light  are,  at  any  rate,  reflected  from  it  in  a  manner 
peculiar  to  itself ;  and  that  it  is  thus  productive  of  stronger 
sensations  in  the  observer  than  those  of  ordinary  men.  Mante- 
gazza  says  :  "  There  are  some  expressions  which  only  belong  to 
genius,  and  if  we  had  a  photometer  which  could  measure  the 
light  issuing  from  the  eye,  we  might  perhaps  judge  of  the  value 
of  a  picture  or  a  poem  or  of  a  book  by  the  vividness  of  the 
light  that  gleams  in  the  pupil  of  the  artist  or  the  writer."  He 
also  calls  attention  to  the  superior  tonicity  of  the  facial  muscles 
of  highly  intelligent  men,  as  contrasted  with  the  comparative 
flaccidity  of  commonplace  countenances.  Such  highly-strung 
semi-contracted  muscles  are  at  all  times  ready  to  express  the 
transient  play  of  the  subtlest  emotions.  "  The  face  of  a  man 
of  genius  is  a  soldier  with  arms  and  baggage,  always  ready  to 


ioo  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

fight ;  that  of  the  stupid  man  is  an  ex-lazzarone,  always  minded 
to  sleep.1 

The  mean  craving  of  all  democratic  epochs  for  a  dead  level 
of  mediocre  capacity  must,  in  the  interests  of  truth  and  justice, 
be  met  with  a  curt  denial.  It  is  not,  never  has  been,  and — 
never  shall  be  so. 

1 W.  P.  Hantegazza,  Physiognomy  and  Expression.  But  intensely 
introspective  meditation  may  by  its  centripetal  effect  simulate  vacuity  and 
conduce  to  relaxation  of  the  facial  muscles.  Cf.  the  description  of  Hegel's 
physiognomy  above,  p.  85. 


VI 

NATURAL  VOCATION 

Twins — Versatility  and  adaptability — Forms  of  natural  vocation  :  I.  and  II. 

Examples. 

THE  task  of  apportioning,  in  the  life  of  a  given  individual, 
the  respective  roles  of  inborn  capacity  on  the  one  hand  and 
environmental  influence  on  the  other,  is  one  of  extreme  interest 
but  of  no  little  difficulty.  The  problem  has  been  investigated 
on  diverse  lines,  notably  by  Galton,  whose  ingenious  plan  of 
comparing  the  life-histories  of  twins  has  thrown  much  light  on 
the  subject.1  Roughly  speaking,  there  are  two  varieties  of 
twins,  those  of  similar  and  those  of  complementary  or  sharply 
contrasted  characteristics.  The  mass  of  evidence  collected 
by  Galton  tends  decidedly  to  the  conclusions  that,  whereas 
those  twins  whose  inborn  qualities  are  similar  persist  in  their 
similarity,  no  matter  how  different  their  external  circumstances 
may  be,  those  of  the  complementary  type  remain  dissimilar, 
even  though,  from  their  birth  up,  subjected  to  almost  identical 
conditions.  Twins  of  the  similar  type  frequently  suffer  from 
the  same  ailments  at  the  same  time,  and  even  incur  what  might 
almost  be  considered  accidental  maladies  (ophthalmia  and  the 
like)  simultaneously  when  living  in  different  parts  of  the  world. 
Their  coincidences  of  mental  impulse  are  sometimes  extra- 
ordinarily dramatic.  Galton  relates  a  case  in  which  "  one 
twin,  A,  who  happened  to  be  in  a  town  in  Scotland,  bought 
a  set  of  champagne  glasses  which  caught  his  attention  as  a 
surprise  for  his  brother  B  ;  while  at  the  same  time  B,  being 
in  England,  bought  a  set  of  precisely  the  same  pattern  as  a 
surprise  for  A." 

1  Cf.  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty  (History  of  Twins),  by  F.  Galton.  F.E.S. 


102  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

The  only  factor  which  appears  capable  of  modifying  to 
any  notable  extent  the  inborn  similarity  of  twins,  is  a  serious 
illness  of  some  kind  from  which  one  sutlers  and  the  other 
escapes.  In  the  absence  of  such  a  disturbing  factor,  Galton 
found  that  those  twins  who  started  life  with  mental  and  bodily 
resemblances  always  retained  these  resemblances  even  up  to 
old  age,  no  matter  how  different  the  conditions  of  their  lives 
might  have  been.  Not  only  does  the  evidence  produced  by 
him  lead  him  to  the  conclusion  that  nature  is  far  stronger 
than  nurture,  it  even  arouses  in  his  mind  "  some  wonder 
whether  nurture  can  do  anything  at  all,"  that  is,  in  the  way 
of  modifying,  as  opposed  to  educating,  inborn  capacities.  With 
regard  to  the  effect  of  education,  Galton  shrewdly  remarks 
that  "  those  teachings  which  conform  to  the  natural  aptitudes 
of  the  child  leave  much  more  enduring  marks  than  others." 
It  is,  in  fact,  just  those  things  which  a  child  learns  in  its  first  few 
years  and  from  its  parents,  whose  qualities  in  some  respects 
resemble  its  own,  which  are  most  likely  so  to  conform  with  its 
own  predisposition.  This  fact  obviously  increases  the  difficulty 
of  determining  how  far  a  given  tendency,  persisting  through 
life,  does  so  solely  in  virtue  of  its  own  original  strength,  how 
far  also  in  virtue  of  parental  or  other  encouragement  and 
guidance,  bestowed  at  a  favourably  receptive  phase  of  develop- 
ment. But  it  also  justifies  the  assumption  that  no  training, 
however  early,  judicious,  and  persevering,  will  in  itself  afford 
a  full  explanation  of  extraordinary  achievements  on  the  part 
of  its  recipient.  A  mediocre  individual  will  remain  mediocre 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  for  you  can  only  educate  previously 
existent  faculties,  you  cannot  create  non-existent,  nor,  pro- 
bably, greatly  strengthen  rudimentary  ones. 

Confusion  also  arises  from  our  habit  of  regarding  such 
highly  specialised  and  complex  mental  products  as  music, 
mathematics,  painting,  science,  as  perennial  pre-existent 
institutions,  to  which,  thus  regarded,  it  appears  well-nigh 
miraculous  that  human  beings  are  born  so  pre-adapted  that 
they  take  to  them  with  the  same  instinctive  confidence  and 
success  as  a  duckling  to  water.  How  singular  that  when 
square,  oval,  and  round  pegs  appear,  square,  oval,  and  round 


NATURAL  VOCATION  103 

holes  are  found  ready  to  receive  them  !  No  wonder  that  our 
good  friends  the  theosophists,  when  an  infant  prodigy  exhibits 
his  ready-made  technique  in  the  mastery  of  violin  or  pianoforte, 
exclaim  with  confidence  that  here  is  one  more  proof  of  the 
reality  of  reincarnation.  A  "  musical  entity,"  a  soul  deliber- 
ately self-destined  to  virtuosity,  has  entered,  and  at  once 
dominates  its  living  instrument,  the  little  organism  of  the 
prodigy  in  question.  How  delightfully  simple  and — how 
naive  !  Believe  it,  if  you  will — I  know  nothing  conclusive 
to  the  contrary — but  do  not  fail  to  investigate  the  family 
record  of  your  prodigy.  It  will  not,  I  venture  to  predict,  fail 
to  throw  light  on  the  genesis  of  the  "  instrument "  at  least,  if 
not  also  on  that  of  the  aspiration  of  its  governing  entity.  More 
convincing  proofs  of  your  charming  theory  are  very  far  from 
being  superfluous. 

In  any  case,  the  pre-existence  of  square,  oval,  and  round 
holes  is  precisely  the  result  of  innumerable  previous  impressions 
on  the  social  medium,  by  human  pegs  of  corresponding  contours. 
Music,  in  its  present  highly  complex,  highly  developed  and 
specialised  condition,  only  exists  because,  from  time  to  time, 
individuals  have  always  been  born  who  could  fully  express 
their  emotional  cravings  and  aspirations  not  otherwise  than 
in  the  form  of  music.  If  they  had  found  no  music  in  the  world, 
they  would  infallibly  have  set  to  work  to  create  it.  And  the 
same  is  true,  mutatis  mutandis,  of  painting,  science,  mathe- 
matics. A  peg  must  have  some  contour,  and  however  excep- 
tional that  contour  may  be,  it  is  quite  safe  to  predict  that  it 
will  not  prove  unprecedented.  Somewhere  in  the  world  of 
established  activities  the  most  unique  soul  will  find  that  specific 
task  begun  to  which  it  feels  itself  drawn  by  invincible  affinities. 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  matter  is  quite  so  simple  as 
a  too  facile  interpretation  of  the  peg-and-hole  metaphor  might 
suggest.  The  one-man-one-capacity  hypothesis  will  not  by  any 
means  cover  the  complex  actualities  of  human  greatness.  The 
element  of  versatility  has  a  decided  claim  to  recognition  :  of 
many  potentialities,  not  all,  in  the  nature  of  things,  can  expect 
realisation.  For  the  development  of  some  the  environmental 
conditions  may  be  adverse,  even  prohibitive  ;  others,  more 


104  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

opportune,  may  prosper  at  their  expense.  Nor  is  it  even  a 
foregone  conclusion  that  the  capacity  which  finds  fruition  was 
originally  the  dominant  central  potentiality  of  the  nature. 
Adaptability  is  one  element  of  greatness ;  if  need  be,  it  must 
stoop  to  conquer.  By  the  law  of  hedonic  selection,  persistence  in 
a  given  course  of  activity  is  conditioned  by  the  pleasurable 
accompaniment  of  a  sense  of  difficulties  overcome — of  some  kind 
or  degree  of  success.  Thwarted  efforts  tend  to  be  relinquished  in 
favour  of  others  whose  issue  is,  or  seems  likely  to  be,  more 
favourable.  This  consideration  obviously  complicates  the 
problem  of  natural  vocation,  raising,  among  others,  the  question 
whether  a  man,  who  in  a  bygone  age  achieved  fame  as  a  poet 
or  painter,  might  not,  if  born  in  our  time,  have  invaded  the  field 
of  science  or  speculation.  Leonardo's  is,  in  my  opinion,  a  case 
in  point :  he  was  versatile  to  the  degree  of  universal  potentiality, 
and  it  is  quite  an  open  question  whether  the  line  he  chose,  or  I 
should  say  accepted,  was  that  most  suited  for  the  full  develop- 
ment of  his  powers.  And  Frederick  the  Great,  if  he  had  been 
born  to  an  obscure  station,  among  literary  or  musical  folk,  might 
conceivably  have  developed  to  the  point  of  genuine  distinction 
one  of  those  potentialities  destined  in  reality  to  decline  to  the 
position  of  mere  by-activities  in  his  adventurous  career.  What 
was  fundamental  in  his  nature  was  the  desire,  the  unswerving, 
impassioned  will,  to  command  admiration  :  by  a  process  of 
exclusion  he  was,  grudgingly  enough  to  my  thinking,  driven  to 
the  adoption  of  the  Instrument,  the  inborn  capacity,  best 
adapted  to  his  need.  "To  be  a  king  is  a  chance,  but  never 
forget  that  you  are  a  man."  The  chance  was  too  good  to  be 
thrown  away  !  Why  fight  with  naked  hands  when  a  sword  has 
been  thrust  into  them  by  Fate  ?  Still,  upon  the  whole,  it  is 
probably  exceptional  for  a  man  to  achieve  great  things  on  the 
basis  of  any  other  than  the  central  predominant  capacity  of  his 
nature. 

In  the  present  chapter  I  intend,  so  far  as  possible,  to  confine 
my  attention  to  facts  indicative  of  a  spontaneous  tendency 
towards  one  or  another  special  form  of  activity — to  evidences 
of  natural  vocation,  in  short.  Questions  of  environmental  or 
personal  influence  will,  on  account  of  their  obvious  interest  and 


FREDERICK    THE    (1RKAT. 


To  face  p.  ,04. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  105 

importance,  as  also  for  the  sake  of  lucidity,  receive  separate  con- 
sideration. There  are,  I  believe,  several  distinct  and  alternative 
modes  of  manifestation  of  dominant  or  even  of  an  ultimately 
single  capacity.  By  careful  collation  and  comparison  of  the 
somewhat  meagre  evidence  on  this  point,  gleaned  from  the 
biographies  of  my  subjects,  I  have  arrived  at  the  following 
classification,  the  lines  of  which,  though  by  no  means  in  all  cases 
obvious  or  sharply  defined,  will  yet  upon  the  whole  be  found  to 
correspond  with  genuine  distinctions.  Here  and  there  we  may 
encounter  a  life-history  not  easily  assignable  to  any  of  my  four 
categories  ;  but  such  cases  are  exceptional,  and  will  usually  prove 
amenable  to  impartial  scrutiny. 
Natural  Vocation  may  be  : — 

(1)  Decisive  and  single  from  the  first.     Examples  :   Drake, 

Nelson,  Napoleon,  Lincoln,  Titian,  Mozart,  Beeth- 
oven, Flaubert,  Harvey,  Descartes,  Jesus. 

(2)  Decisive  from  the  first,  but  associated  with  collateral 

activities.  Examples :        Caesar,       Charlemagne, 

Kichelieu,  Dante,   Goethe,   Scott,  Turner,   Bacon, 

Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Marcus  Aurelius,  Gregory, 
Emerson. 

(3)  Dubious    at  first,    ultimately    decisive    and    single. 

Examples  :  William  the  Silent,  Cromwell,  Cervantes, 
Galileo,  Newton,  Kant,  Hegel,  Darwin,  Paul, 
Augustine,  Mahomet,  Francis,  Kenan. 

(4)  Dubious  at  first,   ultimately  predominant,  but  with 

survival  of  collateral  activities.  Examples : 
Frederick,  Leonaro,  Luther. 

Much  of  the  evidence  upon  which  the  above  classification 
is  founded  will  come  out  in  the  course  of  our  present  chapter, 
but  if  its  accuracy  in  the  main  be  provisionally  assumed,  it  will 
be  seen  that  the  law  of  hedonic  selection  is  amply  verified  by 
appeal  to  the  facts.  In  the  eleven  careers  assigned  to  my 
first,  and  the  thirteen  assigned  to  my  third  category — twenty- 
four  out  of  the  forty — the  main  activity  was  either  unrivalled 
by  competing  tendencies  from  the  first,  or  ultimately  became 
so.  In  the  majority  of  the  twelve  careers  assigned  to  the 
second  category,  the  collateral  activities  were  either  speedily 


106  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

dropped,  as  Dante  resigned  his  political  ambitions,  Goethe  and 
Scott  their  attempts  at  drawing  and  music ;  subordinated  to 
the  main  purpose  of  life,  as  his  literary  ambitions  were  by 
Csesar ;  found  a  barren  or  disastrous  issue,  as  did  the  poetic 
attempts  of  Richelieu  and  Turner  and  the  public  activities  of 
Bacon;  or  were  continued  only  by  sheer  pressure  of  circumstance, 
witness  the  statesmanship  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Gregory, 
and  the  optical  works  of  Spinoza.  The  poetic  by-activity  of 
Emerson  is  really  part  and  parcel  of  his  dominant  ethical  voca- 
tion. In  only  three  of  our  forty  examples — so  irresistible  is  the 
specialising  tendency  of  life — do  we  find  a  well-marked  survival 
of  activities  rivalling  in  some  degree  the  central  purpose  through- 
out life.  Luther  was  from  the  first  a  musician  of  considerable 
merit,  and  kept  up  his  flute-playing  if  not  his  singing  through- 
out the  vicissitudes  of  his  chequered  and  stormy  career.  The 
strength  of  his  original  aesthetic  impulse  is,  in  the  case  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  amply  proved  by  his  lifelong  constancy 
to  music  and  literature.  Leonardo,  as  he  grew  in  age  and 
enlightenment,  ever  loved  art  less  and  science  more.  Any 
specific  tendency  which  for  a  long  time  proves  itself  independent 
of  the  stimuli  of  external  recognition  or  success,  is  presumably 
based  upon  inborn  capacity  and  not  mere  caprice.  If  it  issue 
in  no  remarkable  achievement,  this  is  probably  due  to  the  lack 
of  external  encouragement,  to  the  diversion  of  energy  into  other 
channels,  and  to  subsequent  partial  atrophy  of  the  original 
capacity  which  it  represents.  There  are  exceptions  to  this  rule, 
however,  for  it  is,  to  me,  quite  inconceivable  that  Turner, 
despite  his  dogged  and  indefatigable  devotion  to  the  muse, 
could  ever  have  become  even  a  passable  poet. 

I.  Of  those  who  from  the  first  and  without  afterthought 
devote  themselves  to  one  single  vocation,  only  Jesus  belongs 
to  the  ethico-religious  type.  And  the  evidence  in  his  case  rests 
practically  on  Luke's  anecdote  relating  how  the  boy  remained 
behind  when  his  parents  had  left  Jerusalem,  and  was  found 
engaged  in  disputation  among  the  teachers  in  the  temple, 
amazing  all  hearers  by  the  maturity  of  his  understanding  and 
the  wisdom  of  his  replies.  It  is  confirmed  by  passages  in  the 

JT  •/       JL 

same  chapter,  stating  that  Jesus  was  in  his  childhood  remark- 


NATURAL  VOCATION  107 

able  as  being  "  filled  with,  wisdom,"  that  the  "  grace  of  God 
was  upon  him,"  and  that  as  he  grew  in  age  and  stature  he 
found  increasing  favour  "  with  God  and  men."  The  story 
seems  credible  on  the  face  of  it,  and  it  would  indeed  be  strange 
if  so  unique  a  destiny  had  not  been  foreshadowed  in  early  life. 
The  other  types  of  personality  are  about  equally  represented 
in  this  first  and  simplest  category.  Francis  Drake  was  almost 
literally  cradled  on  the  deep,  for  his  father,  flying  from  Catholic 
enemies  in  Tavistock,  had  been  assigned,  in  his  new  capacity 
of  reader  of  prayers  to  the  Navy,  the  tenancy  of  a  disused 
warship  in  Chatham  reach.  Francis  himself  was  one  of  twelve 
sons,  mostly  of  seafaring  life,  and  seems  never  to  have  given 
a  thought  to  any  other  vocation.  Very  early  in  life  we  find  him 
apprenticed  to  the  skipper  of  a  small  craft  trading  to  France 
and  Holland,  whereon  "  even  as  his  frame  was  being  rudely 
forged  into  the  thick-set  solidity  that  distinguished  his  man- 
hood, so  was  his  spirit  being  tempered  in  the  subtlest  medium 
that  destiny  could  have  chosen.  On  quay  and  market  and 
ship-board  the  horror  of  the  Inquisition  was  the  only  talk, 
and  the  Flemings  were  flying  from  the  persecutions  of  Philip." 
Some  of  them  perhaps  came  to  England  on  this  very  vessel. 
That  Drake  found  sea  life  congenial  is  fairly  evident  from 
the  fact  that  when  his  master  died  he  bequeathed  the  ship 
to  his  young  pupil.  Drake,  however,  sold  it,  and  presumably 
invested  the  proceeds  in  the  ventures  of  his  kinsmen,  the  sons 
of  old  William  Hawkins,  in  whose  employ  the  historic  drama 
of  his  career  fairly  begins.  The  vocation  of  Nelson  seems  to 
have  been  decided  with  equal  precision  and  promptitude.  At 
the  age  of  twelve,  we  are  told,  he  himself  expressed  a  desire  to 
go  to  sea  with  his  uncle,  Maurice  Suckling,  then  appointed  to 
the  Raisonnabk.  To  sea  he  accordingly  went,  joining  his 
uncle's  ship  in  the  Medway,  and  a  thoroughly  wretched  time  he 
seems  to  have  had  there.  Later,  he  was  sent  on  a  merchant 
ship  to  the  West  Indies,  and  returned  a  practical  seaman,  but 
disgusted  with  the  Navy.  This  disgust  often  returned ;  the 
Navy  was  in  fact  an  exacting  and  not  over-grateful  mistress 
to  Horatio  Nelson,  but  she  was  his  first,  and  in  the  deepest 
sense  his  only  love.  Nelson's  unique  vocation  is  evidenced 


io8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

not  only  by  the  actual  choice  of  and  fidelity  to  a  particular 
profession,  but  by  the  peculiar  strain  of  Quixotic  chivalry, 
the  romantic  ardour  which,  from  early  boyhood,  throughout 
life  impelled  him  to  court  danger  with  an  eagerness  almost 
approaching  to  greed.  Of  the  sincerity  of  this  passion  there 
can  (pace  Bernard  Shaw)  be  no  question  with  any  competent 
psychologist.  It  must  have  been  in  the  mind  of  Nelson's  father 
when  he  said  of  the  boy  that,  in  whatever  station,  he  would 
climb,  if  possible,  to  the  very  top  of  the  tree. 

Equally  decisive  were  the  early  tastes  of  Napoleon.  He 
was  a  taciturn,  haughty,  unsociable  boy,  full  of  self-love  and 
unbounded  ambition.  His  education,  from  his  tenth  year, 
was  purely  military,  and  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  this  was 
in  great  measure  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  shown  a  strong 
predilection  for  such  a  career.  He  did  not  inherit  his  father's 
linguistic  tastes,  but  loved  solid  reading,  especially  history, 
and  showed  pronounced  mathematical  and  geographical 
abilities.  Very  significant  is  the  story  of  how,  at  fourteen, 
the  churlish  lad  for  once  came  out  of  his  shell,  incited  his  school- 
fellows to  dig  trenches  and  raise  parapets  of  snow,  organised 
a  miniature  siege,  and  himself  led  the  attack  for  fifteen  successive 
days.  Even  more  so  is  the  fact  that  on  his  entrance  into  the 
military  school  at  Paris,  Napoleon,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  ventured 
to  remonstrate  with  the  vice-principal  in  regard  to  the  luxurious 
and  extravagant  habits  countenanced  among  the  students, 
which,  rightly  enough,  he  considered  the  very  worst  prepara- 
tion for  a  soldier's  career.  As  a  boy,  Napoleon  affected  the 
revolutionary  works  of  Rousseau  and  Raynal,  and  professed 
sympathy  with  the  nationalist  aspirations  of  his  native  Corsica. 
What  attracted  him  in  such  writers  was,  no  doubt,  the  negative 
spirit  of  general  disaffection,  rather  than  any  sort  of  humani- 
tarian zeal.  When  as  a  young  man  of  twenty-four,  having 
returned  to  Corsica  on  leave,  he  was  approached  by  Paoli,  the 
leader  of  the  patriotic  party,  Napoleon  refused  to  be  drawn 
into  a  cause  which  promised  so  little  and  exacted  so  much. 
He  had  renounced  his  Corsican  birthright,  and  chosen  France 
for  the  spring-board  of  his  world-wide  ambition.  A  point 
of  some  interest  in  reference  to  Napoleon  is  the  fact  that  he 


Engraved  for  Captain  Brcnton's  "Naval  Ilist 


NATURAL  VOCATION  109 

seems  to  have  been  subject  to  the  hallucinatory  perception 
of  a  star,  which  appeared  to  him  on  all  great  occasions,  com- 
manding him  to  go  forwards.  He  considered  it  a  sign  of  good 
fortune,  and  in  1806  expressed  surprise  because  it  was  invisible 
to  General  Rapp,  to  whom  he  had  pointed  it  out.  Such  stars 
are  a  not  uncommon  hallucinatory  phenomenon  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  great  men.1  When  Nelson,  in  his  youth,  returned, 
almost  a  skeleton,  from  his  first  voyage  to  the  East  Indies,  he 
became  greatly  discouraged,  and  convinced  that  he  could 
never  rise  in  his  profession.  But  he  relates  how,  one  day, 
"  after  a  long  and  gloomy  reverie,  a  sudden  glow  of  patriotism 
was  kindled  within  me,  and  presented  my  king  and  country 
as  my  patrons.  '  Well,  then,'  I  exclaimed,  '  I  will  be  a  hero  ! ' : 
From  that  time,  he  often  said,  a  radiant  orb  was  suspended  in 
his  mind's  eye,  which  urged  him  onward  to  renown.  The 
analogy  with  the  case  of  Napoleon  is  rather  striking,  although 
with  Nelson  there  is  no  claim  for  the  objectivity  of  the  appear- 
ance. But  was  Napoleon  quite  sincere  in  the  belief  he  ex- 
pressed in  his  own  star  ?  Doubtful,  in  the  extreme ! 

With  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  earliest  indication  of  excep- 
tional destiny  is  perhaps  found  in  an  omnivorous  quest  of 
general  knowledge.  Of  education,  properly  so  called,  he  had 
almost  none,  barely  so  many  days'  schooling  as  to  make  up 
one  year  in  all  his  life.  To  attend  one  school  he  was  obliged 
to  walk  nine  miles  from  home.  But  what  scanty  leisure  he 
could  steal  from  farm  labour  and  odd  jobs  was  devoted  to 
hard  study,  and  his  custom  was  to  write  out  summaries  of  all 
the  books  he  read  and  to  learn  them  by  heart.  One  who  knew 
him  at  this  time  says :  "  He  was  always  reading,  scribbling, 
ciphering,  writing  poetry,  and  the  like."  This  may  seem  to 
suggest  literary  aspirations,  but  I  do  not  myself  believe  that 
he  was  ever  seriously  drawn  towards  a  career  of  authorship. 
The  books  he  read  were  of  a  distinctly  practical  trend — national 
history,  the  lives  of  great  statesmen,  and  so  forth.  At 
sixteen  we  find  him  frequenting  religious  and  political  meetings, 
and  on  the  day  after  he  would  mount  a  stump  and  declaim  to 
his  companions  the  speeches  he  had  heard.  Quite  early,  too, 
1  Cf,  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty  (Visionaries),  by  F.  Galton, 


no  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

he  turned  to  the  study  of  law,  and,  by  the  time  he  was  twenty- 
five,  had  by  his  unaided  efforts  made  himself  a  sound  lawyer. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  from  early  youth  Lincoln  had  quietly 
determined  to  achieve  greatness.  He  set  himself  deliberately 
to  test  his  own  qualities,  and  could  not  fail  to  discover  that 
one  of  the  most  valuable  of  these  was  his  power  of  winning 
popularity.  In  all  his  troubles,  and  they  were  many  and 
grievous,  he  never  lacked  the  aid  of  true  friends.  He  had 
an  iron  will,  indomitable  perseverance,  and  for  all  his  geniality 
was  so  self-centred  that  one  who  knew  him  well  opines  that 
"  no  human  being  ever  had  the  slightest  personal  influence  on 
him."  As  to  his  popularity,  we  read  that  "  his  wit  and  humour, 
his  inexhaustible  fund  of  stories,  and,  above  all,  his  kind  heart, 
made  him  everywhere  a  favourite."  His  own  stepmother, 
whom  he  called  his  "  saintly  mother,"  says  of  him  that  he 
was  the  best  boy  she  ever  saw  or  ever  expected  to  see.  That 
the  main  trend  of  his  ambition  was  early  defined,  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that  a  Mr.  Offatt,  who  employed  him  in  looking 
after  a  store  at  New  Salem,  said  of  Lincoln  that  "  he  knew  more 
than  any  man  in  the  United  States,  and  would  some  day  be 
President."  This  when  Abraham  was  only  twenty- two  ! 

Of  the  boyhood  of  Titian  we  know  little,  but  that  little 
is  fairly  decisive  as  to  the  plastic  unity  of  his  aesthetic  impulse. 
He  is  recorded  to  have  shown  an  early  aptitude  for  painting, 
and  one  of  the  earliest  manifestations  of  his  genius  was,  we  are 
also  told,  the  decoration  of  a  wall  with  a  Holy  Family,  limned 
in  the  juices  of  flowers  !  At  any  rate,  we  know  that  at  the 
early  age  of  nine  or  thereabouts,  he  was  sent  to  lodge  with 
an  uncle  in  Venice,  and  placed  under  the  tuition  of  Giovanni 
Bellini.  Titian  came  of  an  ancient  family,  the  Vecelli  of  Pieve 
di  Cadore  in  the  southern  Tyrol.  It  is  a  hilly  district,  and  Josiah 
Gilbert  suggests  that  the  strong  acquisitiveness  of  the  artist 
may  not  be  unrelated  to  the  mountain  origin  of  his  race.  But 
though  somewhat  covetous,  Titian  was  liberal  in  the  spending 
of  the  bounteous  earnings  of  his  art,  a  man  of  large  ideas,  in- 
clined to  splendour  and  voluptuousness.  The  artist  in  him 
was  tempered  by  the  man  of  the  world,  the  courtier,  and,  I 
must  add,  the  sensualist.  But  his  ambition,  from  the  first 


NAPOLEON    BONAPARTE,    LIEUTENANT    n'ARTII.I.ERIE. 
Front  a  painting  by  J.  />'.  Greuze 

To  face  f>.  no. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  in 

and  throughout  his  long  life,  was,  in  essentials,  one  and  indivis- 
ible, based  on  an  indisputably  single  and  inborn  vocation. 
One  and  indivisible,  too,  was  the  lifelong  ambition,  or,  I  should 
say,  aspiration,  of  Mozart,  who,  bat  for  a  little  episode  which  I 
shall  presently  relate,  might  pass  as  an  embodiment  of  the 
Platonic  idea  of  aesthetic  genius.  Some  one  once  asked  Rossini 
who  was  the  greatest  musician.  "  Beethoven !  "  "  What 
of  Mozart,  then  ?  "  "  Oh  !  Mozart  is  not  the  greatest,  he  is 
the  only  musician  in  the  world."  Every  one,  of  course,  knows 
how  Mozart  was  an  infant  prodigy  ;  how  his  skill  in  playing 
the  harpsichord  was,  almost  in  his  babyhood,  already  the  talk 
of  Salzburg ;  how,  not  content  with  this,  he  secretly  studied 
the  violin,  mastering  it  to  a  degree  which,  in  the  competent 
opinion  of  his  father,  afforded  a  guarantee  that  he  might 
easily  become  the  first  violinist  in  Europe.  How  he  com- 
posed, at  the  age  of  seven  years,  sonatas  6,  7,  8,  9,  which,  when 
published,  "  revealed  within  their  scope  an  impeccable  correct- 
ness of  form."  How,  in  his  ninth  year,  he  was  working  upon 
an  orchestral  symphony ;  and  in  his  fifteenth,  at  Florence, 
amazed  a  too  sceptical  Grand  Duke  by  improvising  fugal 
elaborations  of  allotted  themes,  "  as  easily  as  one  eats  a  piece 
of  bread."  The  episode  referred  to  above,  to  which  I  invite 
attention,  is  the  fleeting  inclination  of  the  boy  to  mathematics. 
We  read  of  him  "  covering  walls,  tables,  etc.,  with  figures  and 
numerals."  The  fancy  soon  passed,  crowded  out  by  the  musical 
preoccupation  so  strongly  inherent  in  his  nature,  and  so  pre- 
dominantly favoured  by  his  environment.  But  how  if  Mozart 
had  been  the  adopted  son  of  a  mathematician,  imbued  with  a 
proselytising  zeal  for  his  own  avocation  and  a  contempt  for 
aesthetics  ?  The  musical  composer  and  the  mathematician 
possess  in  common  a  deep-seated  psychological  bias  which 
might  perhaps  be  defined  as  the  feeling  for  abstract  expression, 
in  the  one  case  of  emotional,  and  in  the  other  of  purely  formal 
conceptions.  There  is  an  intellectual  element  in  the  severity 
of  all  art-work  of  the  highest  order  (in  the  construction  of  a 
fugue  or  a  symphony,  for  example),  divorced  from  which  the 
practice  of  art  deteriorates  into  the  flabbiness  of  mere  senti- 
mentality. 3 'And  there  is  an  aesthetic  side  to  pure  science,  a 


H2  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

stern  beauty  in  the  symbolic  formulae  so  tersely  yet  adequately 
summarising,  so  triumphantly  annexing  for  ideal  manipulation, 
innumerable  factors  of  experience.  In  the  nests  of  birds,  the 
honeycombs  of  bees,  the  polished  flint  implements  of  primitive 
man,  we  find  germinal  manifestations  of  the  same  constructive 
instinct  which  effloresces  in  the  sublime  architectonics  of  the 
Jupiter  Symphony,  as  well  as  in  the  pregnant  logical  symmetry 
of  the  infinitesimal  calculus. 

The  boyhood  of  Beethoven,  though  lacking  the  sensational 
features  of  Mozart's  precocity,  gave  ample  promise  of  musical 
pre-eminence.  He  himself,  while  very  young,  spoke  of  the 
possibility  of  his  becoming  "  a  great  man."  His  love  of  music 
showed  at  a  very  early  age,  and  his  father,  a  singer  at  the  Court 
of  the  Elector  Maximilian  Friedrich,  made  him  work  at  the 
violin  and  spinet.  At  the  age  of  twelve  he  became  deputy 
organist,  and  could  play  most  of  Bach's  forty-eight  fugues. 
When  he  was  about  seventeen  he  visited  Mozart  at  Vienna, 
received  a  few  lessons  from  him,  but  was  recalled  to  Bonn 
through  the  illness  of  his  mother.  '*  Mark  that  young  man  : 
he  will  make  to  himself  a  name  in  the  world,"  was  the  verdict 
of  the  elder  musician.  In  1792  (aet.  21),  Beethoven  removed 
to  Vienna,  took  lessons  from  Haydn,  Schenk,  Salieri,  and 
Albrechtsberger,  floated  at  once,  as  a  performer,  on  the  spring- 
tide of  popular  favour,  and  in  1801  could  write  :  "  I  have  more 
orders  (from  publishers)  than  I  can  satisfy."  ..."  There  is 
no  longer  any  bargaining  with  me  :  I  demand,  and  the  money 
is  paid." 

Gustave  Flaubert  showed  the  imaginative  bent  of  his  mind 
by  improvising  scenes  and  dialogues,  in  which  he  took  all  the 
parts,  before  he  could  read.  A  strong  feeling  for  style  and  a 
passionate  aspiration  are  displayed  in  the  letters  he  wrote  to 
a  companion  between  the  ages  of  nine  and  eleven.  The  paternal 
billiard-table  was  commandeered  for  a  stage,  whereon  Gustave 
and  his  friends  declaimed  tragedies  and  comedies  to  an  audience 
of  admiring  relatives.  He  soon  became  the  central  figure  of 
a  circle  of  romantic  youths  who  mutually  excited  one  another 
into  a  condition  of  literary  exaltation.  One  of  them  carried 
the  pose  a  little  too  far,  and  hanged  himself .J;  In  deference  to 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


To  face  /.  112. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  113 

his  father's  wish,  Flaubert  made  a  conscientious  effort  to  study 
law.  He  could  make  nothing  of  it,  and  soon  gave  it  up  in  dis- 
gust. To  be  a  man  of  letters,  an  artist,  that  alone  made  it 
worth  his  while  to  live. 

Concerning  William  Harvey,  D'Arcy  Power  says  that  "  his 
habits  of  minute  observation,  his  fondness  for  dissection,  and  his 
love  of  comparative  anatomy,  had  probably  shown  the  bias  of 
his  mind  from  his  earliest  years."  Hence  he  entered  Caius 
College  at  sixteen,  graduated  there  in  Arts,  and  travelled  through 
France  to  Padua,  where  he  studied  under  Fabricius,  a  surgical 
anatomist  who  had  made  a  special  study  of  the  valves  of  the 
veins,  but  without  discovering  their  true  function.  At  twenty- 
two  Harvey  left  Padua,  armed  with  a  highly  eulogistic  diploma, 
setting  forth  how  "  he  had  conducted  himself  so  wonderfully 
well  in  the  examinations,  and  had  shown  such  skill,  memory,  and 
learning,  that  he  had  far  surpassed  even  the  great  hopes  which 
his  examiners  had  formed  of  him."  There  is  not  a  trace  of 
uncertainty  or  ambiguity  in  regard  to  the  choice  of  a  vocation 
in  the  record  of  Harvey's  early  life  ;  and  throughout  his  career 
he  remained  entirely  absorbed  in  the  scientific  interests  of  his 
work.  At  the  same  time,  he  was  a  man  of  good  general  culture. 
In  particular,  he  was  devoted  to  the  poems  of  Virgil,  after  a 
reading  of  which  he  would  sometimes  throw  aside  the  book, 
exclaiming,  "  He  hath  a  devil !  " 

The  early  inclination  of  Descartes  towards  intellectual 
pursuits  is  clearly  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  was  called  by 
his  father  "  his  little  philosopher."  His  early  education  was 
received  from  the  Jesuits  at  La  Fleche,  an  order  for  which  he 
retained  a  lifelong  regard.  For  the  first  few  years  he  studied 
the  humanities,  moral  philosophy,  and  logic.  It  was  not 
until  he  was  eighteen  that  he  turned  his  attention  to  mathe- 
mathics.  Here  he  at  once  found  himself  at  home,  being 
conscious  of  a  strong  fascination  in  the  clearness  and  pre- 
cision of  mathematical  processes.  He  learned  to  solve  the 
more  abstruse  problems  with  extraordinary  ease  and  rapidity, 
and  all  his  life  was  constantly  tempted  to  turn  aside  from 
other  tasks  in  order  to  indulge  this  master-passion.  No  better 
example  of  inborn  capacity  of  a  highly  specialised  form  could 
8 


H4  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

well  be  desired.  The  entire  philosophy  of  Descartes  is  based 
upon  his  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  extending  the  mathe- 
matical ideal  so  as  to  embrace  the  whole  field  of  knowledge. 
His  logical  rules  were — (a)  to  admit  as  true  only  what  was 
perfectly  clear  and  distinct ;  (6)  to  resolve  all  difficulties  into 
their  elements  ;  (c)  to  pass  from  the  solution  of  the  easier  to  the 
more  difficult  questions ;  and  (d)  to  omit  nothing.  "  Apud 
me  omnia  sunt  mathematica  in  naturd"  he  declared ;  and 
to-day  it  is  a  commonplace  that  only  those  aspects  of 
reality  which  are  already  capable  of  mathematical  formu- 
lation can  be  regarded  as  really  subject  to  the  dominion  of 
science. 

II.  We  have  now  to  consider  some  examples  of  lives  in 
which  the  predominant  capacity,  though  decisive  from  the  first, 
is  associated  with  one  or  another  collateral  activity.  The  first 
case,  that  of  Caesar,  need  not  detain  us  long,  because  his  pursuit 
of  literature,  though  hardly  an  essential  factor  of  his  contem- 
porary efficiency,  was,  after  all,  only  one  more  expression  of  his 
main  central  interest  and  purpose  as  a  statesman  and  a  man  of 
action.  It  is  interesting  to  learn  that  Caesar  in  his  boyhood 
wrote  a  poem  in  honour  of  Hercules,  and  composed  a  tragedy  on 
(Edipus,  but  it  would  be  easy  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
the  fact.  He  seems  to  have  turned  instinctively  to  politics,  and 
his  promise  of  distinction  in  this  field  was  not  overlooked  by 
Marius,  who,  during  the  brief  period  of  his  seventh  consulship, 
made  his  nephew  (aged  fourteen)  a  priest  of  Jupiter  and  a 
member  of  the  sacred  college,  thus  placing  at  his  disposal  a 
munificent  salary.  On  the  death  of  his  father,  Caesar,  aged 
sixteen,  gave  further  proof  of  exceptional  strength  and  acumen, 
by  breaking  ofi  his  engagement  with  the  lady  chosen  for  him, 
and  marrying  Cornelia,  daughter  of  the  all-powerful  Cinna.  By 
this  match  he  entered  into  decisive  alliance  with  the  popular 
as  opposed  to  the  Senatorial  party.  Nor  was  he  shaken  in  his 
resolve  by  the  catastrophe  which,  on  the  return  of  Sylla, 
overwhelmed  the  cause  of  the  progressives.  The  popular 
army  was  cut  to  pieces,  his  father-in-law,  Cinna,  was  killed, 
and  Sylla,  appointed  Dictator  by  the  Senate,  sought  to  persuade 
young  Caesar  to  divorce  his  wife  and  to  ally  himself  by  a  new 


NATURAL  VOCATION  115 

marriage  with  the  patrician  interest.  Caesar  firmly  rejected 
these  overtures,  whereupon  Sylla  deprived  him  of  his  priest- 
hood, confiscated  his  estate,  seized  his  wife's  dowry,  and  finally 
set  a  price  upon  his  head.  Caesar's  life  was,  however,  saved  by 
the  intervention  of  powerful  friends,  and  Sylla  gave  way, 
sullenly  predicting  that  this  young  Caesar — "  in  whom  there  are 
many  Mariuses  " — would  overthrow  the  aristocracy.  When 
we  consider  that  the  unmoved  subject  of  this  violent  but  futile 
attack  was  a  mere  youth  of  eighteen,  we  cannot  but  realise  the 
exceptional  impression  thus  early  produced  by  Caesar's  per- 
sonality upon  his  contemporaries,  their  evident  sense  of  him 
as  a  factor  of  already  serious  import  in  the  political  situation. 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  reconcile  the  firm  dignity  of  Caesar's  attitude 
at  this  trying  moment,  or  his  unswerving  loyalty  to  the  appar- 
ently ruined  cause  of  his  adoption,  with  the  views  of  those  who 
regard  him  as  a  mere  timeserver,  whose  public  policy  was  based 
on  nothing  deeper  that  selfish  ambition.  Napoleon  in  his 
youth  had  professed  to  sympathise  with  the  nationalist  aspira- 
tions of  the  Corsicans,  but  when  invited  by  Paoli  to  throw  in 
his  lot  with  the  patriotic  party,  he  at  once  discovered  that  the 
island  was  too  small  for  independence.  What  would  have  been 
easier  for  Caesar  than  to  have  joined  the  party  of  reaction  in  the 
moment  of  its  triumph  ?  That  he  resisted,  rather,  contemned 
the  inducements  proffered,  is  a  strong  testimony  to  the  sincerity 
of  his  convictions.  With  regard  to  the  literary  activities  of 
Caesar,  it  is,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  a  noteworthy  fact  that 
they  assumed  the  form  of  a  succinct  record  of  his  military 
exploits  and  experiences.  They  were,  therefore,  no  mere 
irrelevant  by-activity,  as  were,  for  example,  the  poetic  dramas 
of  Richelieu,  but  an  integral  part  of  his  career  as  a  man  of 
action. 

They  are  also  remarkable  for  the  severely  impersonal, 
detached  tone  of  the  narrative,  and  for  the  absence  of  rhetorical 
flourish  or  egotistical  display.  The  Eoman  simplicity  of  these 
writings  has  an  austere  beauty  of  its  own  ;  Circero — no  partial 
critic — said  of  Caesar's  literary  style,  that  fools  might  think 
to  improve  it,  but  only  fools  would  try.  Few  lives,  upon  the 
whole,  have  manifested  the  high  quality  of  moral  unity  in 


n6  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  degree  which  we  find  it  in  Caesar's.1  It  has,  too,  the  note 
of  reticence,  of  a  noble  pride  that  disdains  to  justify  itself  to 
lower  natures,  confident  of  the  integrity  of  its  aims  and  secure 
of  the  favourable  verdict  of  posterity.  Truly,  as  Froude 
remarks,  "  this  great  man  moved  through  life,  calm  and  irre- 
sistible, b'ke  a  force  of  Nature." 

Of  the  boyhood  of  Charlemagne  we  possess  few  details,  and 
the  fact  that  he  was  already  twenty-six  when  he  succeeded 
his  father  necessarily  deprives  us  of  the  opportunity  of  gauging 
at  all  fully  his  early  bias  for  government  and  warfare.  He 
had  had  the  advantage  of  a  long  training  in  the  adroit  methods 
of  Pepin  the  Short,  but  the  skill  with  which  he  took  up  the 
reins  and  the  unmistakable  continuity  of  his  policy  with 
that  of  his  predecessors,  point  decisively  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  found  both  task  and  policy  congenial.  War  was,  of 
course,  the  main  activity  of  his  long  and  glorious  reign,  but 
amid  the  turmoil  of  his  incessant  campaigns  and  ever-growing 
burdens  of  responsibility,  Charles,  under  the  guidance  of  Alcuin, 
found  time  to  supplement  the  deficiencies  of  his  academic 
education  by  the  study  of  Latin,  Greek,  rhetoric,  astronomy, 
grammar,  and  logic.  He  naturally  assimilated  the  current 
view  that  all  learning  was  ancillary  to  theological  and  ecclesi- 
astical interests,  became  a  keen  controversialist,  and  the  chief 
patron,  if  not  the  prime  instigator,  of  a  classico-theological 
renascence.  Under  his  pillow  he  kept  writing  materials  to 
note  down  suitable  subjects  for  discussion.  He  loved  to  pose 
rich  prelates  by  sudden  demands  for  the  solution  of  some  subtle 
casuistical  problem.  In  the  Libri  Carolini  he  maintained 
his  own  view  with  regard  to  the  burning  question  of  image- 
worship  in  the  teeth  of  Pope  Hadrian  himself.  Upon  the 
whole,  the  intellectual  pursuits  of  Charlemagne,  like  the  literary 
activities  of  Caesar,  form  an  integral  portion  of  the  general 
purpose  of  his  career. 

Kichelieu,  who  was  the  youngest  son  of  a  man  who  rendered 
valuable  services  to  Henri  d'Anjou  and  was  made  grand  provost 

1  "  Strictly  ...  we  should  not  speak  of  solitary  performances  of  Csesar  ; 
he  created  nothing  solitary.  .  .  .  Csesar  is  the  complete  and  perfect  man  " 
(Mommsen). 


NATURAL  VOCATION  117 

of  France,  also  inherited  much  practical  ability  from  his  mother, 
Suzanne  de  la  Porte,  the  daughter  of  a  famous  avocat.    Pro- 
fessor Lodge  considers  that  we  have  no  evidence  that  he  showed 
any  youthful  precocity  or  gave  any  signs  of  his  future  greatness, 
while  his  health  was  from  the  first  sickly  in  the  extreme.    He 
was  at  first  intended  for  a  military  career,  and  the  training 
which  he  received  at  the   Academic  to  this  end  must  have 
proved  congenial,  for  in  the  course  of  his  career  he  on  several 
occasions,  notably  in  Italy  in  1630,  took  a  leading  part  with 
evident  gusto  in  the  business  of  war.     But  on  the  refusal  of 
an  elder  brother  to  be  consecrated  Bishop  of  Lugon,  the  du 
Plessis  family,  rather  than  forfeit  the  emoluments  of  the  office, 
effected  the  transfer  of  young  Armand  to  the  ecclesiastical 
career.    Five  years  later,  at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  he  was 
consecrated  Bishop,  and  by  this  time  he  seems  to  have  con- 
ceived  a   definite   purpose   of   achieving  political  distinction, 
his  avowed  model  being  the   Cardinal  du  Perron,  a  notable 
anti-Huguenot    champion.     For    several    years,    however,    he 
remained  quietly  working  in  his  diocese,  but  no  doubt  he  was 
on  the  look-out  for  an  opportunity  of  initiating  a  more  pro- 
minent role.    The  death  of  Henri  iv.  evoked  in  him  the  deter- 
mination of  making  frequent  visits  to  Paris.    In  1610,  aged 
twenty-five,  he  spent  six  months  there,  got  to  know  Concini, 
and  resolved  to  side  with  the  Court  against  the  nobility  in  the 
struggle  for  supremacy,  which  he  clearly  foresaw.    Five  years 
later,  having  got  himself  elected  as  deputy  for  the  clergy  of 
Poitou,  he  harangued  the  States-General  for  an  hour  in  a  speech 
which  attracted  great  attention,  and  from  this  time  Richelieu 
was  a  man  of  mark.     The  Church  policy  defined  in  this  speech 
was  distinctly  Ultramontanist  in  tendency,  representing  rather 
the  sentiments  of  the  majority  at  the  moment  than  those  under- 
lying his  own  future  career.     The  above  outline  of  Richelieu's 
first  steps  in  public  life  indicates  an  instinctive  bias  towards 
action,  as  unmistakable  in  its  way  as  that  of  Caesar  or  Charle- 
magne.   In  regard  to  his  literary  pursuits,   however,   he  is 
different  in  this  respect,  that  they  remained  a  mere  by-activity, 
an  irrelevance,  and,  one  may  even  add,  a  waste  product  upon 
the  whole.     His   indefatigable  and  lifelong  industry  in  the 


n8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

production  of  versified  dramas  never  commanded  any  real 
success,  and  even  the  immense  prestige  of  his  political  authority 
could  not  extort  any  substantial  measure  of  recognition  from 
contemporary  judges  of  his  merits  as  an  author.  If  the  truth 
were  to  be  told,  I  daresay  that  his  pretensions  to  poetic  genius 
were  the  subject  of  many  sly  jests.  In  a  less  exalted  or  less 
ambitious  field  he  was  more  successful ;  his  Instruction  du 
Chretien  passed,  in  his  lifetime,  through  thirty  editions. 
Nor  must  we  forget  that  we  owe  to  him  the  foundation  of  the 
French  Academy,  and,  to  his  grant  of  a  license  for  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Gazette,1  the  inauguration  of  the  French  newspaper 
press.  So  that  it  is,  after  all,  only  in  the  narrowly  personal 
eense  that  his  literary  aspirations  proved  barren  of  results. 

Caesar  in  his  boyhood  wrote  poems,  but  soon  felt  and  obeyed 
the  stronger  instinct  summoning  him  to  the  arena  of  war  and 
government.     Similarly,  or  conversely,  Dante  for  a  time  aspired 
to  play  a  prominent  part  in  the  fierce  politics  of  his  day,  but, 
sternly  rebuffed  by  destiny,  recoiled  upon  his  inner  life,  and 
there  achieved  the  mastery  denied  him  in  the  objective  sphere. 
He  was  a  mere  child  of  nine  when,  at  the  house  of  his  parents, 
he  first  beheld  Beatrice  Portinari,  and  at  once  conceived  that 
deep  yearning  passion  which  thenceforth  became  the  central 
motif  of  his  intense  and  lonely  life.    When  he  first  began  to 
write  of  his  love  we  do  not  know,  but  it  was  nine  years  later 
when,  having  met  her  dressed  in  pure  white  and  received  her 
mute  salutation,  he  returned  home  ecstatic,  fell  asleep,  and 
while  sleeping  beheld  a  "  marvellous  vision."    Awaking,  he 
composed  a  sonnet  beginning,  "  To  every  captive  soul  and  gentle 
heart,"  which  he  sent  to  Guido  Cavalcanti,  who  recognised 
the  utterance  of  a  brother  poet  and  became  his  friend.    At 
this  time  Dante  also  practised  drawing,  for  we  read  of  an  attempt 
to  delineate  an  angel  "  upon  certain  tablets,"  and  we  think 
it  would  not  be  difficult  to  give  a  name  to  the  model  who  posed 
hi  his  mind's  eye.     Beatrice,  as  we  all  know,  married  another, 
and  it  may  have  been  at  her  wedding  that  his  visible  and  un- 
controllable emotion  excited  the  derision  of  bystanders,  and 
even,  alas,  of  the  loved  one  herself.    She  died  soon  after,  and 
1  To  which  he  himself _was  a  frequent  contributor. 


From  t he  portrait  l<y  Giotto  in  the  liar^ella  at  l-'hrcnce. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  119 

Dante  for  a  while  turned  to  lower  things  ;  then,  again,  tried 
to  drown  his  grief  in  the  study  of  Bcethius  and  Cicero.  But 
in  or  about  his  thirtieth  year,  political  ambition  led  him  to 
enrol  himself  in  the  Medical  Guild,  thus  qualifying  for  official 
rank.  Five  years  later  he  achieved  the  distinction  of  election 
to  one  of  the  six  Priorates,  the  highest  office  in  the  Republic 
of  Florence.  "  All  my  woes,"  he  truly  asserts,  "  had  their 
origin  in  my  unlucky  election."  It  is  needless  to  recount  the 
complex  events  which  resulted  in  Dante's  leaving  the  Papal 
or  Guelf  party  and  becoming  one  of  the  Ghibelline  or  Imperialist 
faction,  or  those  which  ended  in  his  conviction  in  absence  on 
a  trumped-up  charge  of  peculation  and  conspiring  against  the 
Pope.  Having  ignored  the  first  verdict,  he  was  re-condemned 
to  exile,  and  to  be  burned  alive  if  caught.  The  blow  was  a 
crushing  one ;  after  a  brief  period  of  burning  resentment  and 
a  futile  quest  of  vengeance,  Dante  resigned  himself  to  the 
inevitable.  His  political  ambition  died,  and  the  remaining 
twenty  years  of  his  life,  spent  in  exile  and  for  the  most  part 
in  poverty,  were  mainly  devoted  to  the  completion  of  the  poem 
whose  object  was  "  to  rebuke  and  to  glorify  the  lives  of  men 
according  to  their  several  deserts." 

It  was  thus,  in  a  sense,  the  continuance  of  his  practical 
aims,  transferred  to  the  ideal  plane,  for  Dante  embodied  in  his 
Commedia  a  complete  system  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  govern- 
ment, being  in  truth  "  a  man  with  a  mission,  eaten  up  with 
zeal  for  the  House  of  God,  and  aflame  with  a  more  than  Shelleyan 
passion  for  reforming  the  world." 

A  superficial  examination  of  the  early  life  of  Goethe  might 
lead  one  to  suppose  that  his  vocation  was  at  first  doubtful. 
He  had  at  least  the  semblance  of  an  all-round  ability,  and 
in  his  youth  inspired  interest  in  men  of  various  callings,  each 
of  whom  had  a  career  ready  for  him.  "  One  saw  in  him  a  pre- 
destined man  of  science  ;  a  second,  a  born  artist ;  a  third, 
an  erudite  theologian  ;  a  fourth,  an  accomplished  courtier  ;  a 
fifth,  a  jurisconsult."  His  father,  while  unable  to  conceal 
his  interest  and  pride  in  Johann's  poetic  effusions  (provided 
they  were  in  rhymed  verse),  desired  that  he  should  become  a 
lawyer,  for  which  he  did  in  fact  qualify  himself,  though  he 


120  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

soon  abandoned  the  profession.  But  casual  acquaintances 
might  easily  mistake  the  universality  of  interest  characteristic 
of  a  first-rate  intellect  for  a  genuine  practical  bias  in  one  or 
another  direction.  If  we  look  deeper  into  the  matter,  indica- 
tions of  an  assthetic  and  literary  tendency  are  abundantly 
visible  from  the  first.  Thus,  at  the  age  of  three,  he  refused 
firmly  to  play  with  another  child  whose  ugliness  he  could  not 
away  with.  And  Linne  recalls  how  in  childhood  "  he  used  to 
sit  at  the  window  of  a  play-room  and  watch  thunderstorms  and 
sunsets,"  and  "  how  the  spectacle  of  nature,  combined  with  the 
sight  of  children  playing  in  the  gardens  and  the  sound  of  balls 
rolling  and  ninepins  falling,  often  filled  him  with  a  feeling 
of  solitude  and  a  vague  sense  of  longing."  Very  character- 
istic of  the  imaginative  temperament  is  his  vivid  memory  of 
the  gilt  weathercock  on  the  bridge  of  the  Main,  gleaming  in  the 
sunshine,  and  of  watching  the  arrival  of  boats  laden  with  goods 
for  the  market.  Exercise-books,  written  between  the  age  of 
seven  and  nine,  are  crowded  with  poetical  effusions,  familiar 
dialogues,  and  moral  reflections. 

"  Even  in  early  boyhood,"  we  read,  "  groups  of  companions 
delighted  to  gather  around  him  to  hear  his  entrancing  tales," 
and  he  also  formed  one  of  a  number  of  boys  who  met  every 
Sunday  to  produce  and  compare  verses,  himself  drily  remarking 
that  each  thought  his  own  the  best.  In  these  respects  his 
boyhood  presents  a  remarkable  resemblance  to  that  of  Walter 
Scott.  Perhaps  I  need  only  add  that  Goethe's  earliest  drama 
was  written  at  the  age  of  ten,  and  he  informs  us,  credibly  enough, 
that  it  contained  "  no  lack  of  kings'  daughters,  princes,  or  gods." 
There  is,  however,  no  doubt  that  Goethe  himself  only  by  degrees 
came  to  recognise  clearly  the  predominant  bias  of  his  innate 
capacity.  He  tried  very  hard  to  master  drawing,  for  which  he 
at  last  found  he  had  no  talent  whatever.  Time  after  time  he 
made  a  bonfire  of  his  manuscripts  :  what  he  approved  was  only 
shown  to  a  few  friends  ;  and  "  it  was  with  hesitation  and 
reluctance  that  he  was  induced  to  come  fairly,  broadly,  and 
openly  before  the  greater  public."  Goetz  von  Berlichingen, 
which  he  regarded  as  a  mere  exercise  or  experiment,  was  pub- 
lished by  Merck's  insistent  advice  and  help,  when  Goethe  was 


NATURAL  VOCATION  121 

twenty-four.  It  created  a  sensation  ;  the  demand  exceeded 
the  supply,  and  a  pirated  edition  came  out.  But  Goethe  did 
not  altogether  deceive  himself  in  believing,  as  he  evidently  did 
believe,  that  there  was  more  in  him  than  could  find  full  ex- 
pression in  poetic  or  imaginative  literature.  It  was  a  fixed 
idea  with  him  that  no  one  should  be  content  to  work  solely  in 
symbols.  "  The  pressure  of  affairs  is  very  good  for  the  mind  ; 
when  it  has  disburdened  itself,  it  plays  more  freely  and  enjoys 
life,'5  he  said.  As  privy  councillor  and  war  commissioner  at 
the  Court  of  Weimar  he  was  responsible  for  duties  which  were 
by  no  means  light.  He  attended  the  council  meetings  with  strict 
regularity,  devoted  special  attention  to  questions  of  finance, 
studied  the  principles  of  mining,  and  organised  the  re-opening 
of  the  mines  of  Ilmenau.  He  carefully  promoted  the  welfare 
of  the  University  of  Jena,  also  that  of  popular  education, 
reformed  the  system  by  which  troops  were  levied,  managed  the 
demesne  lands,  and  supervised  the  department  of  public  high- 
ways. Pretty  good  work  for  a  poet — for  the  author  of  Werther 
and  Faust  \  Goethe's  connection  with  the  mines  at  Ilmenau 
led  him  to  the  study  of  mineralogy,  thus  reviving  a  love  of 
science  which  had  led  him  to  dally  with  medicine  in  his  university 
days.  From  mineralogy  he  passed  to  osteology  and  botany, 
and  at  the  age  of  thirty-five  made  the  really  important  discovery 
of  the  human  pre-maxillary  bone  (or  of  what  he  so  named,  for 
it  is  doubtful  if  his  view  is  entirely  correct),1  which  he  described 
in'  a  Latin  Essay.  Six  years  later  he  published  a  work  on 
the  Metamorphosis  of  Plants,  showing  that  every  part  of  a  plant 
may  be  regarded  as  a  leaf,  or  the  modification  of  one.  He  also 
elaborated  a  theory  of  colour,  of  which  he  was  so  proud  that  he  con- 
sidered it  of  greater  importance  than  all  his  poetry.  The  practical 
and  scientific  work  of  Goethe  were  therefore  no  mere  hobbies  ; 
they  were  the  outcome  of  a  normal  development  of  his  pro- 
foundly original  nature,  a  nature  too  advanced,  too  modern,  too 
catholic,  to  be  fitted  neatly  into  any  of  our  conventional  pigeon- 
holes, labelled  "  poet,"  "  man  of  science,"  or  "  man  of  affairs." 

1  Dr.  E.  Fawcett  believes  that  the  true  pre-maxilla  has  escaped  notice  in 
man,  having  lost  its  alveolo-facial  part.  Cf.  Bristol  Medico-Ckirurgical 
Journal,  Sept.  1906,  pp.  237-49. 


122  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Walter  Scott's  early  life  resembles  that  of  his  great  German 
contemporary  in  several  respects.  He  early  developed  an 
intense  love  of  Nature  and  of  romantic  literature  and  folklore. 
His  memory  for  ballads  and  poems  was  prodigious,  and  his  love 
of  recitation  something  of  a  trial  to  matter-of-fact  associates. 
He  made  an  agreement  with  his  intimate  friend,  John  Irving,  by 
which  each  of  the  boys  were  periodically  to  compose  a  romance 
for  the  other's  delectation.  This  was  kept  up  for  several  years, 
but  Irving's  contributions  were  of  a  perfunctory  nature.  Scott 
was  popular  among  his  school-fellows,  who  in  the  winter  play- 
hours  used  to  gather  around  him  eagerly  listening  to  the  tales 
he  never  tired  of  telling.  Like  Goethe,  he  was  impelled  by  his 
love  of  nature  to  make  arduous  attempts  at  sketching,  for 
which  he  possessed  no  gift  whatever.  In  music  he  failed  even 
more  signally — the  defects  of  voice  and  ear  soon  drove  his 
teacher  to  desperation.  Like  Goethe,  again,  he  was  educated 
for  the  law,  but,  unlike  him,  he  studied  conscientiously,  and 
after  being  called  to  the  bar  (aged  twenty-one)  his  earnings 
increased  from  £24  in  his  first  year  to  £144  in  the  fifth.  In  his 
twenty-sixth  year,  Scott  became  quartermaster  to  a  newly- 
raised  corps  of  cavalry  volunteers.  "  He  took  his  full  share 
in  all  the  labours  and  duties  of  the  corps,  had  the  highest  pride 
in  its  progress  and  proficiency,  and  was  such  a  trooper  himself 
as  only  a  very  powerful  frame  of  body  and  the  warmest  zeal  in 
the  cause  could  have  enabled  any  one  to  be." 

Scott's  aim  was,  for  a  long  time  at  least,  to  make  literature 
"  a  staff,  but  not  a  crutch,"  believing  (like  Goethe  again)  that 
"  to  spend  some  hours  every  day  in  any  matter-of-fact  occupa- 
tion is  good  for  the  higher  faculties  themselves."  Accordingly 
he  was  at  pains  to  secure,  first  the  position  of  Sheriff  of  Selkirk- 
shire (aged  twenty-eight),  then  (aged  thirty-five)  that  of  Clerk 
to  the  Supreme  Court  of  Sessions  at  Edinburgh.  The  duties 
of  the  latter  post  were  by  no  means  onerous,  but  the  salary 
was  £800.  He  also,  of  course,  jointly  with  the  Ballantynes, 
engaged,  with  disastrous  results,  in  publishing,  and  was  the 
promoter  of  the  Quarterly  Review.  Moreover,  in  his  later  years 
he  took  an  active  part  in  politics  and  civic  affairs,  presiding 
over  public  meetings  of  almost  every  sort,  speaking  against  the 


NATURAL  VOCATION  123 

Reform  Bill,  and  so  forth.  In  his  fortieth  year,  Scott  purchased 
the  site  of  Abbotsford,  the  planning,  building,  and  enlargement 
of  which  as  a  family  mansion  and  estate,  was  henceforth  to  be 
the  true  master-passion  of  his  life.  In  five  years  the  estate 
had  grown  by  repeated  purchases  from  150  to  near  1000  acres. 
Scott's  nature  was  essentially  energic,  centrifugal  rather 
than  intense  ;  and  although  he  doubtless  utilised  much  of  what 
he  learned  by  these  various  by-activities  in  his  novels,  their 
quality  as  literature  can  hardly  have  gained  by  them  upon  the 
whole.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  these  by-activities,  however 
impressive  as  manifestations  of  superabundant  vitality,  have 
in  themselves  a  value  or  significance  comparable  with  the 
constructive  statesmanship  or  the  scientific  achievements  of 
Goethe.  Scott's  first  and  last  ambition  was  "  to  found  a 
family."  In  all  other  ways  he  lived  in  and  for  the  moment, 
having  no  real  respect  for  his  art.  "  You  know  I  don't  care  a 
curse  about  what  I  write  or  what  becomes  of  it."  In  the  heyday 
of  his  prosperity  he  had  sought  also — and  here  we  discern  the 
fine  thread  of  romanticism  that  unifies  his  career — to  revive 
at  Abbotsford  "  the  interior  life  of  the  castles  he  had  emulated 
— their  wide  open,  joyous  reception  of  all  comers — ballads  and 
pibrochs — jolly  hunting  fields — mirthful  dances." 

The  art-vocation  of  Turner  was  decisive  from  the  first,  and 
could  have  owed  little  or  nothing  to  environment,  though  no 
doubt  his  father's  shop  in  Maiden  Lane  was  often  visited  by 
artists.  His  taste  for  drawing  asserted  itself  when  he  was  only 
five  years  old ;  his  profession  was  decided  upon  then  or  soon 
after,  and  he  was  a  mere  lad  when  he  began  his  sketching 
expeditions  with  Girtin,  the  attendance  at  Sandby's  drawing 
school,  and  the  addition  of  skies  to  architectural  drawings 
which  constituted  his  first  steps  in  art.  It  is  worth  noting  that 
his  perspective  master,  Tom  Malton,  twice  dismissed  him  as 
"  impenetrably  dull,"  bidding  his  father  make  him  a  tinker  or 
a  cobbler  rather  than  a  perspective  artist.  At  fourteen,  after 
a  brief  trial  of  architectural  study,  he  entered  the  Royal  Academy 
school  of  art,  where,  if  Ruskin  is  to  be  believed,  he  was  taught 
nothing  of  the  least  value,  not  even  the  rudiments  of  the  tech- 
nical side  of  painting.  With  regard  to  Turner's  one  by-activity, 


124  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

his  grotesque,  life-long  attempts  at  poetry,  but  for  the  psycho- 
logical interest  of  the  thing,  it  might  be  passed  over  as  mere 
waste  of  time.  Turner  could  never  express  himself  clearly 
in  speech  or  letter ;  he  could  not  even  spell ;  yet,  as  inter- 
minable pages  of  sheer  drivel,  jotted  down  in  his  sketch-books, 
testify,  he  harboured  the  pathetic  delusion  that  he  was,  or 
might  become,  a  poet.  Passages  from  an  undiscovered  MS. 
poem,  appropriately  entitled  "  Fallacies  of  Hope,"  formed, 
after  his  thirty-eighth  year,  portions  of  the  titles  of  many 
important  pictures.  Yet,  after  all — Turner  was  a  poet.  Shut 
in  by  Nature  to  one  form  of  expression,  his  lips,  his  very  brain 
sealed  with  the  seal  of  incoherency,  as  Beethoven  was  imprisoned 
by  deafness — Turner,  the  dumb  poet,  the  poet  of  colour  and 
atmosphere — at  once  obeys  and  rebels.  There  is  a  gleam  of 
poetry,  now  and  again,  amid  the  meaningless  verbiage. 
Napoleon  at  St.  Helena  muses,  gazing  down  on  the  sunset-dyed 
rock-limpet  at  his  feet : — 

'  Ah  !  thy  tent-formed  shell  is  like 
A  soldier's  nightly  bivouac,  alone 
Amidst  a  sea  of  blood.  .  .  . 
.  .  .  But  you  can  join  your  comrades  !  "  .  .  . 

Who  can  deny  the  pathos  of  this  tersely-outlined  conception  ? 

Men  of  genius,  it  may  here  be  noted,  can  be  roughly  divided 
into  two  great  classes — those  whose  power  is  their  instrument, 
and  those  who  are  the  instruments  of  their  power.  To  the  first 
division,  whose  destiny  is  to  attain  lucidity,  to  understand  fully 
the  value  and  significance  of  their  lifework,  belong  a  few 
supreme  statesmen,  like  Caesar,  most  great  poets,  like  Dante 
and  Goethe,  not  many  musical  composers  or  painters — 
Leonardo's  case  is  an  exception — all  great  philosophers,  and 
the  greatest  of  the  ethico-religious  pioneers.  To  the  second 
belong  many  men  of  action — Drake,  Nelson — artists  of  the 
sensuous  rather  than  the  intellectual  type,  scientific  discoverers 
as  opposed  to  philosophers,  and  perhaps  reformers  of  the 
Lutheran  type.  These  men  of  the  latter  group  are  instinctively 
great ;  their  genius  is  permanently  centred  in  the  subconscious 
mental  and  emotional  strata  ;  they  are  greater  than  they  know 


NATURAL  VOCATION  125 

or  understand.     To  this  class  belong  Turner  and,  in  less  degree, 
Scott,  Mozart,  perhaps  even  Beethoven  and  Titian. 

The  intellectual  distinction  of  Bacon  dates  from  his  under- 
graduate days.  He  entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in 
his  twelfth  and  graduated  in  his  fourteenth  year,  leaving  behind 
him  a  reputation  for  precocious  learning  and  for  an  already 
marked  hostility  to  the  Aristotelian  philosophy,  to  dethrone 
which  was  to  be  the  central  interest  of  his  mental  career.  He 
was  admitted  to  the  society  of  Gray's  Inn  in  his  sixteenth 
year ;  then  spent  three  years  on  the  Continent  in  the  house- 
hold of  Sir  Amyas  Poulet.  Soon  after  his  return  he  was  called 
to  the  bar  (1582),  and  he  became  the  member  for  Melcombe 
Regis  in  his  twenty-third  year.  His  importunate  appeals 
for  patronage  to  his  maternal  aunt,  Lady  Burghley,  date  from 
his  twenty-first  year.  Three  years  later  he  wrote  a  short  Latin 
treatise  entitled  The  Greatest  Birth  of  Time.  Almost  from 
the  first,  then,  his  intellectual  and  political  ambitions  had 
existed  side  by  side  in  his  nature,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  which 
was  the  dearer  object  of  desire.  His  wonderful  power  as  an 
orator  must  naturally  have  impelled  him  towards  public  life. 
Ben  Jonson  says  that  "  no  man  ever  spoke  more  neatly,  more 
pressedly,  more  weightily.  .  .  .  His  hearers  could  not  cough 
or  look  aside  from  him  without  loss.  The  fear  of  every  man 
that  heard  him  was  lest  he  should  make  an  end."  Professor 
Nichol  aptly  remarks  of  Bacon  that  "  his  consciousness  of  almost 
boundless  powers  was  accompanied  by  an  almost  physical 
craving  to  secure  for  them  ample  scope."  The  more  one 
studies  their  lives,  the  stronger  grows  one's  conviction  that 
men  of  first-rate  intellect  seldom  if  ever  find  full  satisfaction 
in  purely  contemplative  ends.  Bacon  was  not  merely  a  thorough 
patriot,  but  a  sincere  lover  of  mankind,  and,  although  no  demo- 
crat, was  as  a  statesman  substantially  in  sympathy  with  the 
best  tendencies  of  his  day.  In  Ireland  he  was  for  conciliation 
and  the  redress  of  grievances;  in  religious  controversy  his 
guiding  principle  was  "  one  faith,  one  baptism ;  not  one  hierarchy, 
one  ceremonial."  His  temperate  yet  firm  advocacy  of  the  Scots 
Union  has  been  amply  justified  by  the  event.  In  the  Privy 
Council  he  stood  a  head  and  shoulders  above  his  associates. 


126  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Nicliol  points  out  that  as  an  advocate  Bacon  excelled  only  in 
attack,  and  has  left  no  great  defence  on  record — even  his  own 
was  a  failure — and  attributes  this  to  his  tendency  "  to  maintain 
the  abstract  and  attack  the  particular."  While  on  the  subject 
of  Bacon's  collateral  activities,  it  may  fairly  be  expected  that 
something  be  said  as  to  his  hypothetical  authorship  of  Shake- 
speare's plays,  not  to  mention  those  of  Marlowe,  Green,  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  and  Spenser's 
Faerie  Queen.  With  regard  to  the  alleged  cryptograms,  I 
intend  to  say  just  this,  that  the  specimen  passages  I  have  seen 
are  not  in  any  way  worthy  of  Bacon,  and  I  do  not  believe  they 
are  Elizabethan  prose.  There  are,  however,  sundry  facts  which 
do  seem  to  suggest  some  sort  of  connection  between  Bacon  and 
the  dramatic  literature  of  his  day.  In  the  first  place,  it  is,  to 
say  the  least,  strange  that  until  1605  (Bacon's  forty-fifth  year) 
he  published  nothing  except  a  few  pamphlets  and  the  Essays. 
After  1605,  when  the  Advancement  of  Learning  appeared,  there 
was  a  further  silence  of  fifteen  years  until  1630,  when  the  Novum 
Organum  was  published.  But  Mr.  Lee  states  that  Bacon's 
literary  work  occupied  most  of  his  time  throughout  life.  Secondly, 
it  is  alleged  by  Harold  Bayley,  that  in  a  letter  to  the  Queen, 
Essex  complains  of  Antony  and  Francis  Bacon,  that  "  already 
they  print  me  and  make  me  speak  to  the  world,  and  shortly 
they  will  play  me  in  what  form  they  list  on  the  stage."  Thirdly, 
it  appears  that  the  day  before  the  rising  of  Essex,  a  performance 
of  Richard  II.  was  given  at  the  Globe  in  recognition  of  a  bribe 
from  the  rebels,  who  thought  the  scene  representing  the  killing 
of  a  King  likely  to  encourage  a  popular  outbreak.  Urged  by 
the  Queen  to  include  this  matter  in  the  list  of  the  crimes  of 
Essex,  Bacon  excused  himself  thus  :  "  I  having  been  wronged 
by  bruits  before,  this  would  expose  me  to  them  more,  and  it 
would  be  said  I  gave  in  evidence  my  own  tales."  Fourthly, 
in  the  1604  edition  of  Hamlet  occurs  the  line,  "  Sense  sure  you 
have,  else  could  you  not  have  motion."  And  in  the  Advance- 
ment, published  1605,  "  some  of  the  ancient  philosophers  could 
not  conceive  how  there  can  be  voluntary  motion  without  sense." 
In  the  De  Augmentis  (1623)  Bacon  expressly  repudiates  this 
opinion  as  untrue,  and  in  the  folio  Shakespeare  (1623)  the  corre- 


NATURAL  VOCATION  127 

spending  passage  is  absent.  Fifthly,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
court  of  Cymbeline  was  at  Verulamium  (Verulam  by  St.  Albans), 
and  that  whereas  the  town  of  Stratford  is  (it  is  alleged)  never 
mentioned  by  Shakespeare,  that  of  St.  Albans  is  referred  to 
twenty-three  times.  Finally,  there  is  the  suggestion  of  an  auto- 
biographical reference  to  his  own  fall  by  Bacon  in  the  playjof 
Henry  F//7.1  Is  it  possible  that  Bacon,  who  was  described  by 
John  Aubrey  as  a  "  concealed  poet,"  secretly  collaborated  with 
Shakespeare  and  others  ?  I  can  believe  that  he  may  have 
supplied  the  intellectual,  but  not  the  rhythmic,  element ;  and 
this,  after  all,  is  the  life-pulse  and  ultimate  secret  of  poetry. 
Did  Bacon  perhaps,  in  consequence,  unduly  depreciate  the 
role  of  his  poetical  collaborators,  overlooking  the  infinite  differ- 
ence between  the  bare  skeleton  (which  he  may  have  supplied 
in  some  instances)  and  the  living,  breathing  creation  which 
issued  from  the  hands  of  this  or  the  other  dramatist  ?  If  BO, 
he  may  have  come  to  regard  himself  as  the  author  of  any  plays 
in  the  planning  of  which  he  had  some  share,  however  insignifi- 
cant from  the  point  of  view  of  the  creative  artist.  There  are  not 
wanting  coincidences  to  connect  Bacon  with  other  contem- 
porary dramatists.  Thus  we  find  him  writing :  "  The  gods 
have  woollen  feet "  ;  and  Marlowe  :  "  Thus  as  the  gods  creep  on 
with  feet  of  wool."  But  I  must  leave  this  matter  to  the  further 
investigation  of  the  curious. 

Spinoza's  intellectuality  showed  itself  at  an  early  age. 
At  fifteen  he  was  one  of  Eabbi  Morteira's  most  promising 
pupils  in  the  Talmud.  He  studied  the  philosophical  writings 
of  Maimonides  and  Ibn  Ezra,  and  read  Latin  with  a  free-thinking 
physician,  also  science  and  physiology.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
four  he  was  solemnly  cursed  and  excommunicated  for  teaching 
and  practising  heresy,  by  the  authorities  of  the  synagogue, 
who  also  induced  the  civil  powers  to  banish  him  from  Amster- 
dam. Spinoza,  who  had  declined  the  offer  of  an  annuity  of 
1000  florins  for  a  promise  of  conformity,  changed  his  Jewish 
name  of  Baruch  to  Benedict,  but  received  the  anathema  with 
equanimity.  "  This  compels  me  to  nothing  which  I  should  not 

1  These  instances  are  drawn  from  The  Tragedy  of  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  an 
interesting  if  somewhat  chimerical  book  by  Harold  Bayley. 


128  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

otherwise  have  done."  As  to  his  by-activities,  Golems  mentions 
a  book  he  had  full  of  portrait-sketches,  and  he,  of  course,  earned 
his  livelihood  by  the  grinding  of  lenses. 

Leibnitz,  as  the  son  of  a  professor,  had  access  to  a  well- 
stocked  library,  of  which  from  the  first  he  eagerly  availed 
himself.  At  the  age  of  ten  he  was  JTnTnerap.fi  in  Cicero,  Quinc- 
tilian,  Seneca,  Pliny,  Herodotus,  Xenophon,  and  Plato.  He 
speaks  himself  of  his  early  thirst  for  knowledge,  and  striving 
towards  clearness  of  expression  and  utility  of  subject-matter. 
To  these  ideals  he  remained  constant  throughout  life.  At 
seventeen,  in  a  thesis,  De  Principio  Individui,  he  defended 
the  position  that  whatever  exists  is  individual.  The  various 
practical  activities  of  Leibnitz — his  unwearied  efforts  to  pro- 
mote re-union  of  the  Catholic  and  Protestant  Churches,  his 
endeavours  to  arrest  or  divert  the  aggressive  ambition  of  Louis 
xiv.,  his  promotion  of  Imperial  unity  and  reform,  his  negotia- 
tions with  the  courts  of  Vienna,  Dresden,  St.  Petersburg,  and 
Berlin  on  behalf  of  the  foundation  of  scientific  academies — 
were  no  mere  irrelevant  hobbies,  but  as  genuine  expressions  of 
his  intrinsic  aspirations  as  the  discovery  of  the  calculus  or  the 
composition  of  the  Theodicee. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  at  the  age  of  eight,  in  the  capacity  of 
prsesul  of  the  Salian  priests,  attracted  the  attention  of  Hadrian 
by  his  goodness,  docility,  and  incapacity  for  falsehood.  At  the 
age  of  twelve,  Marcus  donned  the  philosopher's  cloak,  learned  to 
sleep  on  bare  boards,  and  injured  his  health  by  the  rigour  of  his 
self-discipline.  Here,  truly,  the  boy  was  father  to  the  man. 
Marcus  was  an  ascetic  moralist  by  vocation,  an  Emperor  and  man 
of  affairs  by  necessity.  A  reviewer,  who  shall  be  nameless, 
has  on  grounds  which  appear  to  me  ridiculous,  pronounced 
Marcus  Aurelius  a  "  tragic  failure,"  stigmatising  the  twenty 
years  of  his  rule  as  "  the  definite  beginning  of  Rome's  downfall." 
The  verdict  of  Renan,  which  will  have  more  weight  with  the 
judicious,  is  to  the  contrary  effect.  He  justly  remarks  that, 
assuming  a  due  sense  of  responsibility  in  the  sovereign,  king- 
ship is  an  aid  to  virtue,  by  the  limitations  it  imposes  on  caprice. 
The  test-question  for  a  man  like  Aurelius  will  be,  How  did  he 
succeed  in  war  ?  He  disliked  war,  but  a  great  part  of  his  reign 


NATURAL  VOCATION 


129 


was  perforce  devoted  to  it,  and  "  his  sense  of  duty  made  him 
a  great  captain.  ...  He  completely  freed  Pannonia,  beat 
back  the  barbarians  to  the  left  bank  of  the  Danube,  even  made 
long  marches  beyond  that  river.  ...  It  may  be  that,  but  for 
the  revolt  of  Avidius  Cassius,  he  would  have  succeeded  in  making 
a  province  of  Marcomannia  and  another  of  Samatia,  and  in 
securing  the  safety  of  the  future.  .  .  .  He  firmly  maintained 
the  military  frontier  .  .  .  and  upheld  the  prestige  of  the 
Empire."  Further,  he  greatly  improved  the  legal  position  of 
slaves,  making  cruelty  to  them  a  crime,  giving  them  the  right 
to  their  earnings,  and  to  a  share  in  unclaimed  estates,  also 
prohibiting  the  separate  sale  of  husband,  wife,  and  child. 
Granted  that  Marcus  Aurelius  behaved  with  undue  leniency 
to  his  wife  and  to  the  vile  Commodus,  and  at  least  sanctioned 
the  cruel  persecution  of  Christians — if  the  life  of  every  man 
who  commits  one  or  two  blunders  or  connives  at  one  crime 
is  to  be  accounted  a  "  tragic  failure,"  who  shall  escape  con- 
demnation ?  The  Emperor  was  adored  by  his  contemporaries, 
and  his  career  must  be  esteemed  a  triumph  of  self-disciplined 
will  over  temperament,  by  all  unbiassed  judges. 

Gregory  the  Great  presents  in  several  respects  a  curious 
parallelism  of  nature  and  destiny  with  the  Stoic  Emperor. 
From  early  boyhood  he  inclined  to  monasticism,  and  throughout 
life,  even  after  he  became  Pope,  loved  best  the  society  of  monks, 
seizing  every  opportunity  of  temporary  retirement  to  the 
monastery  he  had  founded  on  the  Coelian.  But  Gregory  was 
at  first  destined  for  forensic  work,  and  his  father  would  not 
sanction  the  renouncement  of  his  legal  studies.  His  mind 
matured  early — probably  he  was  never  young  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word — and  even  as  a  youth  he  seems  to  have  attained 
a  reputation  among  his  fellow-citizens  as  one  marked  out  by 
exceptional  probity  and  high  gifts  for  a  great  career.  Justin 
made  him  Praetor  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  a  position  in  which, 
by  wielding  the  chief  judicial  authority  with  combined  justice 
and  charity,  he  made  himself  more  popular  than  ever.  On 
succeeding  to  his  father's  wealth,  however,  the  old  passion 
revived  :  he  spent  most  of  his  inheritance  on  the  Church,  turned 
his  palace  into  a  monastery,  and  himself  took  the  humblest 
9 


130  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

place  among  the  brethren.  But  it  was  not  to  be.  The  people 
of  Rome  would  not  even  sanction  his  leaving  on  a  mission  to 
England,  for  he  had  been  made  a  deacon,  and  they  felt  that 
he  could  not  be  spared.  Public  life  absorbed  him,  and  on 
his  return  from  Byzantium  (aged  forty-four)  he  became,  first 
papal  secretary,  and  then  Pope.  He  begged  the  Emperor  to 
refuse  approbation  of  the  election,  but  Maurice  expressed  him- 
self as  delighted  with  the  choice  that  had  been  made.  Hence- 
forth Gregory  had,  as  best  he  could,  to  reconcile  the  cares  of 
a  world-wide  statesmanship  with  the  innate  craving  for  sanctity 
and  the  contemplative  life.  The  old  yearning  never  wholly 
died  in  his  heart,  for  in  the  days  of  his  power  and  renown  he 
could  write  to  a  priest  of  Isauria  :  "In  this  I  look  upon  you  as 
exalted,  I  look  upon  you  as  great,  for  before  human  eyes  you 
have  not  attained  a  great  and  exalted  position,  in  which  often, 
while  honour  is  given  outwardly  by  men,  the  soul  is  submerged 
to  the  depths  by  wrecking  cares."  In  one  sense,  all  the  official 
work  of  Gregory  was  a  mere  by-activity,  but  by  the  meekness 
with  which  he  accepted  and  the  loyalty  with  which  he  discharged 
its  immense  responsibilities,  he,  like  Marcus  Aurelius,  made 
of  his  burden  a  means  to  the  development  of  that  inner  con- 
templative life  which  he  supremely  prized.  He  found  time 
also  to  write  a  good  many  works  on  theological  and  liturgical 
subjects,  and  the  vastness  of  his  official  survey  may  be 
estimated  by  the  fact  that  8000  letters,  personally  dictated 
by  him,  occupying  fourteen  volumes,  are  still  extant. 

The  strong  individuality  and  the  peculiar  temperamental 
bias  of  Emerson  revealed  themselves  in  his  boyhood  by  a  certain 
gracious  aloofness  towards  his  schoolfellows.  Without  stiff- 
ness, churlishness,  or  affectation,  he  always  put  and  kept  a 
distance  between  himself  and  others.  He,  like  many  gifted 
souls,  was  by  no  means  a  brilliant  scholar,  being,  as  is  also 
common  in  such  cases,  especially  weak  in  mathematics.  A 
characteristic  trait  is  the  fact  that  he  early  developed  a  love 
for  the  works  of  Montaigne  and  Pascal,1  and  always  carried 
the  Pensees  to  church.  He  loved  solitary  rambles,  and  at 
twenty  writes  :  "I  am  seeking  to  put  myself  on  a  footing  of 
1  Both  distinctively  moral  philosophers,  be  it  observed. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  131 

old  acquaintance  with  Nature,  as  a  poet  should"  l  But  the 
moralist  in  him  was  not  long  in  making  itself  evident :  he 
preached  his  first  sermon  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  and  the 
heads  of  this  discourse  are  strikingly  characteristic,  being 
that — (1)  Men  are  always  praying ;  (2)  All  their  prayers  are 
granted  ;  (3)  We  must  be  careful,  then,  what  we  ask.  In  be- 
coming a  seer  and  a  prophet,  Emerson  did  not,  however,  cease 
to  be  a  poet,  and  it  is  obviously  only  in  the  formal  sense  that 
his  practice  of  this  art  can  be  called  a  collateral  activity. 
1  The  italics  are  mine. 


VII 
NATURAL  VOCATION— Continued 

Forms  of  natural  vocation — III.  and  IV.  Examples — Recapitulation. 

THIRTEEN  of  our  forty  examples  belong  to  the  class  of  great 
men  whose  vocation,  at  first  dubious,  ultimately  became  de- 
cisive and  single.  Of  these,  five  belong  to  the  intellectual 
and  five  to  the  ethico-religious  category.  It  would  seem,  then, 
that  these  two  sub-divisions,  being,  as  I  believe,  the  most 
advanced  of  the  four  main  categories  of  human  ability,  are  those 
whose  members  tend  to  mature  somewhat  later  than  members 
of  the  practical  or  aesthetic  groups.  It  does  not,  of  course, 
follow  because  an  individual  only  settles  down  by  degrees  to 
the  life-task  destined  for  his  fulfilment,  that  no  signs  of  his 
future  greatness  are  to  be  expected  in  the  records  of  his  early 
days.  In  the  boyhood,  youth,  or  early  manhood  of  our  examples, 
we  shall  often  find  abundant  evidence  of  exceptional  ability, 
but  clouded  by  a  certain  vagueness  of  intention,  unfocussed 
upon  any  definite  aim.  There  is  often  a  clear  consciousness  of 
exceptional  power,  but  not  of  a  decisive  motive  to  its  full 
exercise.  Tentative  steps  may  be  taken  in  this  or  the  other 
direction,  perhaps  in  the  wrong  direction  altogether.  At 
last  the  spirit  hears  and  obeys  a  clear  call,  feels  within  itself 
a  response  that  will  not  be  denied,  and  steps  boldly  into  the 
arena  of  predestined  achievement.  It  becomes  impassioned, 
absorbed,  and  is  wrought  by  the  fire  of  effort  into  the  plastic 
unity  of  purposeful  will.  But  in  this  chapter,  as  in  the  last,  we 
shall  be  specially  concerned  with  the  earlier,  vaguer  phase  of 
unformulated  aspiration  and  tentative  activity. 

III.  The  earliest  years  of  the  life  of  William  of  Orange  were 
spent  at  his  birthplace,  the  castle  of  Dillenburg  in  Nassau,  a 


NATURAL  VOCATION  133 

vast  pile  on  a  tributary  of  the  Lahn,  capable  of  accommodating 
1000  persons.  He  was  the  eldest  of  a  large  family,  heir  to 
a  ruling  House  of  the  Empire,  and  in  his  eleventh  year  (1544) 
inherited  also,  from  a  cousin,  the  immense  fiefs  of  the  Nassaus 
in  the  Netherlands,  the  puny  state  of  Orange,  and  the  title  of 
Sovereign  Prince.  The  boy  was  then  sent  to  the  Imperial 
court  at  Brussels  to  be  trained  for  his  exalted  station,  and  won 
the  marked  favour  of  the  Emperor  Charles  v.  A  letter  written 
at  the  age  of  seventeen  shows  him  "  already  full  of  public 
business,  dutiful,  affectionate,  and  devout."  From  his  nine- 
teenth to  his  twenty-sixth  year,  he,  as  colonel  of  ten  companies 
of  infantry,  served  the  Emperor  against  Henri  u.  of  France. 
Of  this  command,  Frederic  Harrison  writes  :  "  The  striking 
note  is  prudence.  ...  He  is  at  twenty -two  already  more  the 
statesman  than  the  soldier."  The  qualities  of  a  great  soldier 
were,  in  fact,  denied  to  him,  and  throughout  his  career  his  real 
successes  were  always  achieved  indirectly,  by  organisation,  by 
intrigue.  On  the  abdication  of  Charles  v.  in  1555,  William 
(aged  twenty-two)  was  made  Privy  Councillor,  and  knighted. 
He  lived  (when  not  on  campaign)  in  royal  state  in  the  splendid 
Nassau  Palace  at  Brussels.  Twenty-four  nobles  and  eighteen 
pages  formed  his  suite.  His  military  service  cost  him  1£  million 
florins,  over  and  above  his  allowance  of  six  thousand  florins 
per  annum.  He  entertained  all  comers,  himself  sharing  to  the 
full  in  the  delights  of  the  chase,  falconry,  tournaments,  dancing, 
and  masquerades.  But  all  this  magnificence,  all  the  adulation 
which  this  exalted  position  involved,  were  powerless  to  affect 
the  innate  sweetness  and  unselfishness  of  his  disposition. 
"  Never  did  harsh  or  arrogant  word  escape  him.  .  .  .  He  was 
beloved  and  in  high  favour  above  all  men  with  the  people." 
It  was  remarked  of  him  that  he  had  a  singular  power  of  bending 
to  his  will  the  other  lords  about  the  court.  What  was,  in 
fact,  dubious  at  first  with  regard  to  William  the  Silent,  was 
not  so  much  his  capacity  for  mere  statesmanship,  but  that, 
in  face  of  a  terrible  conspiracy  to  crush  religious  freedom,  he 
would  suddenly  reveal  the  power  to  cast  to  the  winds  all  con- 
siderations of  material  prosperity,  and  devote  himself  heart 
and  soul  to  the  task  of  ridding  the  Netherlands  of  her  Spanish 


134  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

oppressors.  The  particular  circumstances  which  evoked  this 
determination  belong,  as  environmental  influences,  to  a  different 
part  of  our  subject,  but  such  a  determination  could  not  have 
been  adhered  to  with  unflinching  devotion  through  a  long  life- 
time of  constant  peril  and  opposition,  had  it  not  been  the  true 
expression  of  a  genuinely  chivalrous  and  high-souled  nature. 
A  smaller  man  might  have  once  felt  such  an  impulse  :  only  a 
born  hero  could  have  identified  himself  with  it  in  utter  defiance 
of  fate. 

The  case  of  Cromwell  has  affinities  with  William  the  Silent's, 
because  he  too,  beyond  mere  practical  capacity,  showed  a 
decided  ethico-religious  bias.  He,  however,  entered  the  public 
arena  and  took  up  his  true  life-work  much  later,  for  his  political 
career  only  fairly  began  with  his  election  to  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment (1640)  in  his  forty-first  year.  Cromwell  was  addicted 
to  "  visions  "  and  religious  broodings  from  his  boyhood,  but 
in  the  vigour  of  early  manhood  indulged  more  or  less  freely 
in  roystering,  extravagance,  coarseness,  and  vice.  He,  however, 
married  early  (aet.  21),  and  then  settled  down  quietly  at  Hunting- 
don for  eleven  years,  except  that  in  1628  he  sat  for  a  few  months 
in  Parliament  for  the  borough.  Probably  in  the  days  of  his 
early  married  life  he  underwent  the  serious  process  of  "con- 
version," for  his  farming  is  reputed  to  have  suffered  from  his 
habit  of  gathering  his  men  twice  daily  for  prayer  and  exhorta- 
tion. His  private  life  was  characterised  by  deep  family  affec- 
tion, "  Bible  religion,"  and  tenderness  towards  all  sufferers. 
His  house  was  the  resort  of  persecuted  ministers,  who  were 
sure  of  a  hearty  welcome.  Two  episodes  in  the  life  of  Cromwell 
during  its  comparatively  obscure  phase  are  in  the  light  of 
subsequent  events  decidedly  significant.  In  his  thirty-first 
year  he  had  to  appear  before  the  Privy  Council  in  consequence 
of  a  violent  protest  against  the  abolition  of  popular  election 
of  the  mayor  and  aldermen  of  the  borough.  The  abuse  was 
amended,  but  Cromwell,  soon  after,  sold  his  estate  and  removed 
to  St.  Ives,  and  thence  a  few  years  later,  on  inheriting 
the  Steward  estate,  he  removed  to  Ely.  In  his  thirty-second 
year  Cromwell  was  again  in  hot  water,  being  fined  for  his 
refusal  to  appear  and  to  receive  knighthood  at  the  King's 


NATURAL  VOCATION  135 

coronation.  Nothing  of  all  this,  characteristic  as  it  doubtless 
appears,  really  betokens  the  advent  of  a  born  leader  of  men, 
one  destined  to  prove  himself  England's  greatest  and  most 
typical  man  of  action.  In  the  debates  of  the  Long  Parliament, 
however,  Cromwell  took  from  the  first  (get.  41)  a  prominent 
part,  not,  however,  as  a  leader,  merely  as  one  good  and 
zealous  member,  eager  for  reform.  He  spoke  for  the  Abolition 
of  the  Episcopacy,  for  Annual  Parliaments,  and  for  entrusting 
Essex  with  command  of  the  trained  bands.  He  was  vehement 
for  the  "  Remonstrance,"  and  told  Clarendon  that  if  it  had  been 
rejected  he  would  have  sold  all  next  morning  and  left  England 
for  ever.  Early  in  1642  (Cromwell's  forty-third  year),  Charles 
left  Whitehall  never  to  return  to  it  as  King.  The  strife  had 
begun,  and  Cromwell  boldly  committed  himself  to  irrevocable 
acts  of  treason  and  war.  He  gave  £500  to  the  Commonwealth, 
sent  arms  to  Cambridge,  began  to  raise  volunteers,  saved  £20,000 
worth  of  University  plate  from  being  sent  to  the  King,  seized  the 
magazine  in  the  castle.  Henceforth  for  nine  years  his  life  is  that 
of  a  soldier,  and  his  true  vocation  is  ever  increasingly  apparent. 

Of  the  various  potentialities  that  we  inherit  from  our  parents 
and  ancestors,  there  may  be  some  which,  appearing  early, 
soon  work  themselves  out ;  others  which,  appearing  either  simul- 
taneously or  later,  gradually  establish  themselves  as  permanent 
and  effective.  Cervantes  appears  to  be  a  case  in  point.  He 
came  of  good  hidalgo  stock,  though  his  father  was  not  wealthy, 
and  military  tastes  were  probably  instinctive  in  his  blood.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  his  boyhood  and  youth 
he  had  a  turn  for  literature,  and,  in  conformity  with  the  fashion 
of  his  day,  wrote  verses  which  won  the  praise  of  his  master, 
Lopez  de  Hoyos,  who  foretold  his  greatness.  In  his  eleventh 
year  he  entered  the  service  of  Cardinal  Acquaviva,  an  emissary 
from  the  Pope  to  Madrid,  and  a  noted  virtuoso  ;  and  his  literary 
proclivities  may  thus  have  received  a  further  stimulus.  But 
in  his  twenty- third  year  (1570)  the  desire  of  military  distinction 
asserted  itself,  and  he  enlisted  in  the  regiment  of  Don  Miguel 
de  Moncada  at  Rome,  to  which  regiment,  by  the  way,  only 
men  of  good  birth  were  admitted.  In  the  famous  naval  battle 
of  Lepanto  (1571),  which  demolished  the  naval  supremacy 


136  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  Turkey,  Cervantes,  though  ill  with  fever,  took  a  distinguished 
and  gallant*  part,  and  there  he  received  three  wounds,  one  of 
which  cost  him  the  use  of  his  left  hand.  Four  years  later 
he  found  himself  back  at  Naples,  richer  only  in  empty  honour 
for  the  six  years  of  military  service.  "  His  dreams  of  military 
glory  must  have  been  rudely  disturbed.  .  .  .  The  Turk  was 
beaten,  only  to  renew  the  fight  next  year  in  greater  strength. 
The  victories  in  Africa  had  been  quickly  turned  to  defeat  and 
disaster."  The  disillusionment  of  his  romantic  dreams  of 
chivalry  had  begun.  The  galley  in  which  he  was  returning  to 
Spain  was  captured  almost  within  sight  of  land  by  Algerian 
corsairs,  and  five  years  of  slavery  contributed  to  his  education 
in  realism.  Cervantes  had  enemies,  notably  a  Dominican  and 
agent  of  the  Inquisition,  Blanco  de  Paz,  who  had  calumniated 
him  in  Spain  during  his  absence.  The  charges  made  by  this 
man  were  fully  investigated  by  Father  Gil,  who  brought  to 
Algiers  the  ransom  money  raised  by  Cervantes'  mother  and 
sister.  '*'  The  witnesses  (fellow-captives)  spoke  of  him  in 
terms  such  as  might  glorify  any  hero  of  romance  ;  of  his  courage 
in  danger,  his  resolution  under  suffering,  his  daring  and  fertility 
of  resource  in  action."  He  had  won  all  hearts.  After  two 
years'  further  service  with  his  old  regiment  in  Portugal,  Cer- 
vantes definitely  abandoned  the  army.  In  his  thirty-seventh 
year  appeared  the  pastoral  Galatea,  his  first  acknowledged 
work,  written  for  the  lady  whom  he  soon  afterwards  married. 
He  moved  from  Esquivias  to  Madrid,  and  turned  his  whole 
attention  to  dramatic  literature,  being  probably  "  the  first 
man  of  letters  who  tried  to  live  by  his  pen."  He  wrote  twenty 
or  thirty  plays,  "  all  acted  without  receiving  tribute  of  cucumber 
or  any  other  missile,"  then  ceded  the  dramatic  throne  to  the 
rising  genius,  Lope  de  Vega,  who  could  produce  a  three-act 
play  within  forty-eight  hours.  He  eked  out  a  scanty  and 
precarious  livelihood  by  sundry  uncongenial  employments,1 
but  literature  was,  and  henceforth  remained,  the  one  serious 
interest  of  his  life.  The  first  part  of  Don  Quixote  appeared  in 
his  fifty-eighth  year,  evoking  a  cool  welcome  from  the  critics, 

1  These  might  be  called  collateral  activities,  but,  being  purely  compulsory, 
have,  as  such,  little  or  no  psychological  significance 


NATURAL  VOCATION  137 

an  uneasy  suspicion  of  heretical  tendencies  from  the  clerics, 
the  malignant  envy  of  Lope  de  Vega,  and  the  enthusiastic 
approval  of  the  general  public. 

The  boyhood  of  Galileo,  while  strongly  indicative  of  excep- 
tional ability,  left  the  special  form  later  assumed  by  its  manifesta- 
tion quite  undermined.  It  is  true  that  among  other  things  the 
future  astronomer  and  physicist  was  fond,  like  Newton,  of 
constructing  toys  and  models.  But  he  also  played  the  lute 
and  other  instruments,  was  very  fond  of  painting  and 
drawing,  and  had  serious  thoughts  of  becoming  an  artist.  In 
later  life  he  was,  in  fact,  an  acknowledged  connoisseur.  From 
the  picturesqueness  of  his  literary  style,  his  aptitude  for  ex- 
pressing himself  in  the  dramatic  form,  dialogues  and  so  forth, 
and  his  evident  delight  in  the  business  of  composition  for  its 
own  sake,  one  may  safely  suspect  that  literary  efforts  formed 
also  a  part  of  his  juvenile  activities.  At  the  age  of  nineteen  he 
entered  the  University  of  Pisa  with  a  view  to  the  study  of  medicine, 
where  he  soon  became  obnoxious  to  the  professors  on  account  of 
his  boldness  in  controverting  the  Aristotelian  philosophy,  and 
began  to  dream  of  himself  as  founder  of  a  new  school,  rational 
and  experimental.  In  a  receptive  hour  the  young  under- 
graduate noted  as  isochronous  the  swinging  of  a  lamp  in  the 
cathedral,  and  this  perception  was  the  germ  of  his  first  and  one 
of  his  most  important  discoveries,  that  of  the  use  of  the  pendulum 
as  a  measure  of  time.  He  also  devised  instruments  to  record  the 
variations  of  the  pulse,  an  idea  which  proved  some  centuries  in 
advance  of  his  day,  such  instruments,  in  a  different  form,  being 
even  now  something  of  a  novelty  in  clinical  research.  Obviously, 
the  true  bent  of  his  genius  was  on  the  point  of  declaring  itself. 
Induced — the  fact  is  worth  noting — by  his  love  of  drawing  and 
music,  Galileo  now  began  to  study  geometry  and  mathematics. 
His  father  became  uneasy,  for  Hippocrates  and  Galen  were 
neglected,  and  Archimedes  reigned  in  their  stead.  Medicine 
had,  however,  lost  a  subject,  and  experimental  Physics  had 
gained  one.  At  the  age  of  twenty-six,  Galileo,  on  the  recom- 
mendation of  Ubaldi,  was  nominated  by  Ferdinand  de  Medici  to 
the  Pisan  lectureship  in  mathemathics,  and  at  once  instituted 
a  course  of  experiments  to  test,  and,  as  it  proved,  in  important 


138  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

respects  to  correct,  the  mechanics  of  Aristotle.     Among  these 
was  the  famous  investigation  of   the  speed   at   which  bodies 
of    diverse     weights    fell    from    the     leaning     tower.      Even 
with     the    sound    of    their    simultaneous    arrival    ringing    in 
their  ears,  the  Aristotelians    of    course  remained  unconvinced 
of  the  master's  error  !  Galileo,  however,  had  inaugurated  his 
true  role,  and  henceforth  Science  had  no  rival  in  his  allegiance. 
Newton,  who  in  respect  of  his  early  tastes,  no  less  than  of  his 
ultimate  achievements,  bears  a  curious  resemblance  to  Galileo, 
was  "  a  sober,  silent,  thinking  lad,"  averse  to  outdoor  games, 
and  with  a  preference  for  the  society  of  girls.     He  was  con- 
structive  from   the   first — made   a    model  wind-mill,   a   water 
clock,  a  mechanical  carriage,  experimented  as  to  the  best  form 
of  kites,  and  also  made  tables  and  cupboards  for  the  dolls  of  his 
little  sweetheart,  whom,  by  the  way,  but  for  their  joint  poverty, 
he  would  subsequently  have  married,  visited  often  in  later  life, 
and  generously  relieved,  so  far  as  his  means  allowed.     He  wrote 
poems  of  quite  respectable  merit  (as  juvenile  poetry  goes),  and  his 
bedroom  walls  were  covered  with  pictures,  copied  or  drawn  from 
Nature,  coloured  and  framed  by  himself.     At  the  age  of  fifteen 
he  was  induced  by  his  mother  to  learn  farming,  with  a  view 
to  the  cultivation  of  her  small  property  at  Woolsthorpe,  but 
the    enterprise    proved    hopelessly    uncongenial.     He    entered 
Trinity  at  seventeen  (1660),  innocent  of  scientific  knowledge  ; 
plunged  at  once  into  the  study  of  mathematics — induced,  not  it  is 
true  by  his  love  of  painting,  but  by  the  equally  irrelevant  motive 
of  a  desire  to  test  astrology — obtained  his  degree  at  twenty-two, 
his  fellowship  two  years  later,  and  by  the  end  of  his  twenty-fifth 
year  had  established  the  different  refrangibility  of   light-rays, 
partly  formulated  his  theory  of  gravity,  and  elaborated  the  method 
of  "  fluxions."     The  investigation  of  prophetic  works  under- 
taken by  Newton,  mainly  after  middle  life,  does  not,  in  my 
opinion,  constitute  a  psychological  by-activity — since  it  was, 
in  intention,  at  least,  scientific.     And  his   official   connection 
with  the  Mint  (as  Warden  and  Master),  involving  duties  of  a 
distinctly  scientific    though    comparatively  routine    character, 
was   based   on   purely   pecuniary   considerations.      His   allegi- 
ance to  Science,  as  he  conceived  it,  never  varied  from  the  date 


NATURAL  VOCATION  139 

of    his  entering    Trinity,  dubious   as   the  vocation  may  have 
appeared  in  the  days  of  his  versatile  boyhood. 

With  regard  to  Emmanuel  Kant,  what  was  at  first  doubtful, 
was  not  so  much  his  vocation  for  a  life  of  study  and  research, 
but  the  particular  field  to  the  intensive  cultivation  of  which 
he  gradually  settled  down.  He  entered  Konigsberg  University 
at  sixteen  (1740),  but  did  not  follow  the  usual  course  by  attaching 
himself  to  one  of  the  three  special  faculties.  His  bent  seems 
at  first  rather  in  the  direction  of  physical  than  metaphysical 
interest,  for  he  told  Prof.  Schultz  that  he  would  study  mecticine. 
During  the  six  years  of  his  university  course  he  read  the  current 
metaphysics  of  Wolf,  but  also  the  works  of  Newton.  "  His 
reading,  generally  scrappy,  was  especially  weak  in  the  old 
metaphysicians,"  a  curious  fact,  considering  his  revolutionary 
attitude  towards  their  conclusions.  From  his  twenty-second 
to  his  thirty-first  year  he  was  engaged  in  private  tuition  in 
various  families.  The  fruits  of  his  astronomical  reading  and 
meditation  were  embodied  in  A  General  Natural  History  and 
Theory  of  the  Heavens,  printed  at  the  end  of  this  period,  which 
was,  in  its  way,  a  truly  remarkable  anticipation  of  the  evolution- 
ary hypothesis.  Having  qualified  by  a  metaphysical  thesis 
for  the  position  of  Privatdocent,  he  now  began  to  lecture  on 
mathematics,  physics,  logic,  philosophy,  and  physical  geography, 
the  last-named  being  his  most  popular  course.  It  was  not  until 
about  his  forty-first  year  that  he  dropped  this  encyclopaedic 
role  and  began  to  confine  himself  to  philosophy.  During  the 
five  preceding  years  he  seems  to  have  passed  through  a  sort  of 
mental  struggle,  born  of  a  growing  dissatisfaction  with  accepted 
principles.  Hitherto  he  had  been  on  the  whole  occupied  mostly 
with  scientific  problems,  and  vaguely  resting  in  the  traditional 
metaphysic.  Now,  unsettled  by  the  study  of  Hume  and  other 
sceptics,  he  began  to  feel  the  need  of  a  system  which  should 
be  a  "  science  of  the  boundaries  of  the  human  reason."  l  The 
Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  which  was  to  be  the  outcome  of  this 
crisis  in  his  intellectual  career,  did  not  see  the  light  until  some 
sixteen  years  later,  when  its  author  was  fifty-seven.  Its  definite 
conception  can  hardly  have  preceded  his  forty-fifth  year,  the 
1  Professor  William  Wallace. 


140  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

work  being,  by  his  own  account,  the  product  of  some  twelve 
years'  reflection. 

The  philosophic  genius  of  Hegel  resembled  Kant's  in  that  it 
was  the  efflorescence  of  an  encyclopaedic  interest.1  In  the  days 
when  he  attended  the  gymnasium  at  Stuttgart,  Hegel  was  a 
"  good  boy,"  thoroughly  docile  and  teachable,  but  with  no 
predominant  capacity  as  yet  apparent.  "  He  showed  from  the 
first  the  methodical  habits  of  the  race  of  civil  servants  fiom 
which  he  had  sprung."  At  fourteen  he  began  to  keep  a  diary, 
whose  pages  naively  reveal  a  "  tinge  of  boyish  pedantry  in 
regard  to  the  progress  of  his  studies."  Later  he  became  deeply 
enamoured  of  Greek  Art  and  Literature,  and  translated  the 
Antigone  of  Sophocles,  once  into  prose  and  once  into  verse. 
For  the  latter  (poetic)  art  he  had  some  prediliction,  and  made 
sundry  rather  inexpert  essays  therein  at  different  emotional  crises 
of  his  career.  At  sixteen,  his  thirst  for  general  knowledge  led 
him  to  make  full  extracts  from  every  book  which  interested 
him,  almost  every  branch  of  science  being  represented.  This 
habit  he  continued  through  life.  Hegel,  at  eighteen,  entered 
the  semi-monastic  theological  Seminary  of  Tubingen,  with  a 
view  to  qualifying  for  the  Church.  But  now  his  wings  were 
sprouting  and  he  neglected  the  prescribed  lectures  for  private 
study  of  Rousseau  and  the  classics.  Further,  he  became 
an  ardent  freethinker  and  Jacobin,  and  founded,  with  Schelling's 
co-operation,  a  club  of  like-minded  revolutionists.  Among 
his  fellow-students  he  won  a  perhaps  rather  patronising  popu- 
larity, being  regarded,  not  as  a  "  smug,"  but  no  doubt  as  a 
"  queer  fish,"  though  a  good  fellow  in  his  way.  From  his 
twenty-third  to  his  twenty-ninth  year,  Hegel,  as  Kant  had 
done,  earned  his  living  by  tuition.  Thits  was  his  period  of  mental 
or  spiritual  fermentation.  He  becamo  somewhat  moody  and  self- 
contained,  working  off  his  melancholy  in  sentimental  verse.  Deep 
within  him,  the  extreme  individualism  of  Rousseau  andhis school, 
fortified  by  the  logic  of  the  Kantian  ethics,  was  at  war  with  the 
Hellenic  ideal  of  organic  social  and  political  unity.  Freedom 

1  But  whereas  Kant  came  to  philosophy  mainly  through  the  inorganic 
department  of  science  (astronomy,  etc. ),  Hegel  approached  it  rather  from  the 
historic  and  social  side. 


NATURAL  VOCATION 


141 


without  atomism  was  the  problem  he  had  to  solve,  and  the 
engrossing  interest  of  the  quest  lured  him  on  and  revealed  to  him 
his  true  task  as  an  apostle  of  the  concrete  in  philosophy.  A 
young  man  who  held  that  "  the  objectivity  of  God  has  gone 
hand  in  hand  with  the  slavery  and  corruption  of  man,"  that  the 
God  of  the  Jews  is  "  not  a  better  self  but  an  external  despot " 
whose  Law  sets  them  against  nature  and  human  life  ;  who 
ranked  the  Nemesis  of  the  Greeks  higher  because  it  saw  in 
misfortune  the  embodiment  of  a  man's  own  evil  conscience, 
could  hardly,  without  self-stultification,  become  a  clergyman. 
In  his  twenty-ninth  year  Hegel  inherited  a  small  legacy  (£300), 
and  two  years  later,  feeling  ready  for  the  fray,  he  joined  Schelling 
in  the  conduct  of  a  Critical  Journal,  combating  the  dualism  of 
Kant  and  the  Fichtean  opposition  of  abstract  mind  and  matter. 
To  the  Fichtean  contention  that  the  I  is  everything,  Schelling's 
Philosophy  of  Identity  (with  which  Hegel  at  this  phase  was 
largely  in  sympathy)  retorted  that  so,  too,  everything  is  the 
I.  Hegel,  however,  soon  wearied  of  Schelling's  vague  theosophy, 
feeling  the  need  of  a  stricter  method.  He,  as  Kant  had  done, 
became  a  Privatdocent,  lectured  on  the  futility  of  'emotional 
mysticism,  and  in  his  Phenomenology  of  the  Spirit,  his 
first  serious  essay  in  speculative  literature — he  calls  it  himself 
his  "  Voyage  of  Discovery  " — set  forth,  what  henceforth  re- 
mained his  fundamental  conviction,  that  Truth  must  be  appre- 
hended not  (as  with  Spinoza  and  Schelling)  as  Substance,  but 
as  Subject.  From  what  he  considered  the  central  motive- 
power  of  Christianity — the  principle  of  self-realisation  through 
self-abnegation — he  derived  his  conception  of  the  fundamental 
secret  of  Spirit,  the  manifestation  of  unity  through  conflict — 
and  this  idea  contains  the  germ  of  his  Logic,  the  master-work 
of  his  maturer  years.1 

In  dealing  with  men  like  Spinoza,  Kant,  and  Hegel,  I  am 
compelled  to  anticipate  somewhat,  because,  with  minds  of  such  a 
high  order  of  lucidity  and  universality,  the  discovery  of  their 
vocation  and  the  formulation  of  their  purpose  are  to  a  great 
extent  not  merely  simultaneous,  but  identical  processes.  The 
history  of  their  lives  is  in  great  measure  the  history  of  an  inner 
1  Published  in  1816,  when  Hegel  was  forty-six  years_ol<L 


142  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

struggle  towards  self -comprehension,  and,  the  self  being  conceived 
as  a  universal,  this  implies  at  least  an  attempt  at  the  com- 
prehension of  the  not-self,  of  other  selves,  and  even  of  Reality 
in  general.  Whereas,  with  men  of  action,  and  even  with  artists, 
composers,  and  some  poets,  the  vocation  is  discovered  empiri- 
cally, and  the  consciousness  of  a  definite  aim  or  ideal  comes 
later,  or  may  not  fully  come  at  all.  This  will  become  evident 
when,  in  a  later  chapter,  we  enter  upon  the  subject  of  the  dawn 
and  growth  of  Purpose. 

The  facile  wisdom  which  follows  the  event  enables  us  to  find 
in  the  accounts  of  Darwin's  early  life  abundant  evidence  of 
highly  specialised  ability.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  it  seemed,  to 
those  best  qualified  to  judge,  for  a  long  time  doubtful,  not 
only  what  career  was  in  store  for  him,  but  whether,  in  the 
larger  sense,  he  would  have  any  career  at  all.  His  father,  a 
keen  observer,  and  a  wonderful  judge  of  character,  considered 
him  a  quite  ordinary  boy,  and  so  did  his  teachers.1  While  he 
himself  states  that  he  was  far  from  quick  in  learning,  though 
by  no  means  idle.  "  During  my  whole  life,"  he  says,  "  I  have 
been  singularly  incapable  of  mastering  any  language."  For 
mathematics,  too,  he  had  little  aptitude,  and  all  his  efforts 
at  Cambridge  failed  to  subdue  the  difficulties  of  surds  and  the 
binomial  theorem.  The  limitations  of  great  men  are  always 
of  peculiar  interest,  and  to  those  just  stated  it  may  be  added 
that,  though  he  always  loved  music,  his  ear  was  so  defective 
that  he  could  barely  recognise  the  most  familiar  tunes.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  had  an  exceptionally  good  memory,  was 
greatly  taken  by  the  clear  logical  reasoning  of  Euclid  and 
(later)  of  Paley,  and  from  the  very  first  his  keen  powers  of 
observation  and  his  love  of  collecting  eggs,  beetles,  and  plants 
should,  one  cannot  but  think,  have  indicated  the  true  bent 
of  his  mind.  That  they  did  not,  is,  however,  a  fact  beyond 
controversy.  A  delightful  and  really  somewhat  remarkable 
episode  of  his  very  early  life  (in  view  of  his  Origin  of  Species) 
is  recorded  in  his  Autobiography.  "  I  told  another  little 
boy  that  I  could  produce  variously-coloured  polyanthems 

1  One  of  these,  Dr.  Butler,  much  vexed  the  soul  of  Darwin  by  publicly 
rebuking  him  as  a  "  poco  curante  !  " 


NATURAL  VOCATION  143 

and  primroses  by  watering  them  with  coloured  fluids."  At 
the  age  of  ten  he  was  much  interested  and  surprised  at  seeing 
in  Wales  a  large  black  and  scarlet  hemipterous  insect,  many 
moths,  and  a  Cicuidela,  which  are  not  found  in  Shropshire. 
Later  in  his  boyhood  or  youth  Darwin  developed  something  of 
a  passion  for  literature  (that  is,  the  reading  of  it),  Shakespeare, 
Horace,  Thomson,  Byron,  and  Scott  being  named  as  favourite 
authors.  Then  followed  a  mania  for  shooting.  "  I  do  not 
believe  that  any  one  could  have  shown  more  zeal  for  the  most 
holy  cause  than  I  did  for  shooting  birds."  At  sixteen  he  entered 
the  medical  school  at  Edinburgh,  but  anatomy  inspired  him 
only  with  loathing,  and  he  rushed^in  horror  from  the  theatre 
where  a  child  (in^pre-ansesthetic  days)  was  undergoing  an 
operation.  Then  it  was  decreed  that  he  should  become  a 
clergyman  ;  he  read,  and  apparently  with  acquiescence,  Paley's 
Evidences  and  Pearson  on  the  Creeds,  and — "  wasted " 
three  years  in  a  sporting  set  at  Cambridge.  The  anthems 
at  Bang's  gave  him  intense  pleasure,  "so  that  my  backbone 
would  sometimes  shiver  "  ;  and  this  delight  in  good  music  proved, 
in  contrast  with  a  transient  interest  in  pictures  and  engravings, 
and  in  spite  of  the  defects  of  his  ear,  one  of  his  lasting  character- 
istics. At  Cambridge,  Darwin  was  the  weekly  guest  of  Professor 
Henslow,  the  botanist,  and  here,  with  his  first  definite  introduc- 
tion to  the  scientific  atmosphere  and  to  the  circumstances 
which  determined  and  revealed  his  true  vocation,  we  may  leave 
him  for  the  present. 

We  have  no  information  regarding  the  boyhood  and  early 
youth  of  St.  Paul,  but  from  all  we  know  of  him  it  seems  likely 
that  from  the  first  he  took  life  seriously  and  was  inclined  to 
religious  zeal.  Brought  up  in  the  most  rigorous  principles  of 
the  Pharisees,  he  seems  to  have  profited  little  from  the  oppor- 
tunities of  classic  and  scientific  culture  which  abounded  in 
Tarsus.  He  came  young  to  Jerusalem,  and  entered  the  school 
of  Gamaliel,  an  enlightened  liberal,  familiar  with  Greek.  Despite 
of  this,  he  became  the  head  of  the  fanatical  young  Pharisee 
party,  took,  about  37  A.D.  (aet.  25  to  27),  an  active  part  in  the 
martyrdom  of  the  deacon  Stephen,  and  then  obtained  from 
the  high-priest  authority  to  fetch  Christians  from  Damascus 


144  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

for  punishment  at  Jerusalem.  Few  things,  at  this  moment, 
can  have  seemed  less  likely  than  that  this  anti-Christian  zealot 
was  destined  to  become  the  chief  agent  in  establishing  the  new 
religion  among  the  Gentiles.  But  in  his  very  fervour  there 
may  be  surmised  evidence  of  misgivings  as  to  the  soundness  of 
his  position,  for  men  often  show  special  rancour  against  opinions 
which  in  their  heart  of  hearts  they  suspect  or  fear  to  be  incon- 
trovertible. "  Like  all  strong  souls,"  Kenan  remarks,  "  Saul 
was  near  loving  what  he  hated.  He  sustained  the  charm  of 
those  he  tortured.  What  was  told  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus 
impressed  him  much."  Exactly  what  befel  him  towards  the 
close  of  that  memorable  journey  to  Damascus,  we  shall  pro- 
bably never  know.  He  was  by  nature  something  of  a  visionary, 
and  violent  fevers,  accompanied  by  delirium,  are,  as  Kenan 
feelingly  observes,1  commonly  of  quite  sudden  occurrence  in 
that  climate.  From  the  fact  that,  for  three  days  after  his 
arrival,  Paul  took  no  nourishment,  it  seems  probable  that  he 
was  the  victim  of  some  such  illness,  and  it  also  appears  that 
he  had  conjunctivitis.  Nothing,  in  those  days,  was  fortuit- 
ous ;  and  a  sudden  prostration  by  illness  at  such  a  moment 
could  not  but  impress  the  imagination  of  so  intense  a  tempera- 
ment. It  seems  likely  that  some  lurking  doubts  as  to  the 
justifiability  of  his  attitude  towards  the  Christians  may  have 
objectified  themselves  in  the  form  of  a  vision  of  Jesus,  rebuk- 
ing his  cruelty  and  appealing  to  his  better  self.  Both  rebuke 
and  appeal  were  whole-heartedly  accepted ;  he  had  himself 
baptized  immediately  on  recovery,  and  remained  three  years 
in  the  city  preaching  his  new-found  faith.  Though  destined 
to  become  a  Rabbi,  Saul  had  been  taught  a  handicraft,  and 
this  he  perforce  practised  throughout  his  missionary  life.  He 
was  far  too  independent  to  rely  upon  the  alms  of  his  converts, 
even  had  their  wealth  or  number  sufficed  to  justify  such  reliance. 
But  mechanical  work,  economically  enforced,  is  of  negligible 
significance  in  such  a  career. 

Augustine  seems  to  have  been  a  boy  of  exceptional  promise, 
for  his  father,  a  freedman,  sent  him  (set.  17)  to  be  educated 

1  Kenan's  sister  Henriette  lost  her  life,  and  Renan  barely  escaped  with  his, 
as  the  result'pf  just  such  attacks. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  145 

at  Carthage,  thereby  incurring  expenses  which  he  could  ill  afford. 
Augustine  had  at  first  been  inclined  to  presume  on  his  ability 
by  shirking  study,  and  incurred  many  floggings,  as  to  which 
matter  he  writes  :  "I  began  to  pray  to  Thee,  my  aid  and 
refuge,  .  .  .  with  no  small  earnestness,  that  I  might  not  be 
flogged  at  school."  Here,  perhaps,  the  future  devotee  might 
be  discerned,  but  at  the  early  age  of  fifteen  he  fell  into  evil 
ways.  "  The  madness  of  lust  .  .  .  took  the  rule  over  me,  and 
I  resigned  myself  wholly  to  it."  His  father  took  a  humorous 
view  of  the  profligacy  of  Augustine,  rather  priding  himself 
on  it  than  recognising  the  danger  of  such  conduct ;  but  his 
mother,  "  startled  with  holy  fear  and  trembling,"  warned  him 
with  great  earnestness  to  flee  fornication.  At  Carthage,  how- 
ever, Augustine  became  the  chief  in  the  school  of  rhetoric, 
"  whereat,"  he  says,  "  I  joyed  proudly,  and  swelled  with  arrog- 
ancy."  In  his  eighteenth  or  nineteenth  year  the  first  distinct 
evidence  of  vocation  confronts  us  in  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
he  made  acquaintence  with  the  Hortensius  of  Cicero.  "  Every 
vain  hope  at  once  became  worthless  to  me  ;  and  I  began  to 
yearn  with  an  incredible  fervour  of  heart  for  the  immortality 
of  wisdom,  and  began  now  to  arise  that  I  might  return  to  Thee. 
.  .  .  This  only  gave  me  pause,  that  the  name  of  Christ  was 
not  in  it.  For  that  name  had  my  tender  heart,  even  with  my 
mother's  milk,  drunk  in  and  deeply  treasured,  and  whatsoever 
was  without  that  name  .  .  .  took  not  entire  hold  of  me." 
The  return  journey  of  the  prodigal  had  begun,  but  a  long  and 
weary  road,  occupying  another  thirteen  years  of  his  life,  had 
to  be  traversed  ere  the  goal  of  inner  serenity  was  reached ; 
and  as  yet  the  true  vocation  of  Augustine  can  hardly  have 
been  surmised  even  by  his  most  intimate  friends.  He  was 
now,  and  remained  until  the  time  of  his  conversion  (aet.  31), 
a  professional  rhetorician.  From  his  nineteenth  to  his  twenty- 
eighth  year  he  taught  in  Thagaste  and  Carthage,  "  misled 
and  misleading  "  ;  then  crossed  to  Italy,  and  soon  obtained 
the  post  of  rhetoric  master  at  Milan,  where  the  influence 
of  Bishop  Ambrose  at  last  enabled  him  to  throw  off  the 
bondage  of  Manichieism  and  the  "  vanity  "  of  Platonic  tran- 
scendentalism. 
10 


146  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Strange,  indeed,  it  is  to  reflect  that  a  man  destined  to  initiate 
one  of  the  great  religions  of  the  world,  only  arrived  at  the  first 
clear  consciousness  of  his  mission  in  his  fortieth,  and  died  in  his 
sixty-third  year !  Mahomet,  as  a  boy,  was  observant  and 
thoughtful  beyond  his  age.  He  received  no  formal  education, 
was  not  even  taught  to  read  or  write,  but  "  the  yearly  influx 
of  pilgrims  from  distant  parts  made  Mecca  a  receptacle  for 
all  kinds  of  floating  knowledge,  which  he  appears  to  have  im- 
bibed with  eagerness  and  retained  in  a  tenacious  memory.  At 
the  age  of  twelve  he  visited  Syria  with  his  uncle  and  guardian, 
Abu  Taleb.  At  Bozrah  (E.  Palestine)  they  were  the  guests  of 
a  community  of  Nestorian  monks.  With  one  of  these  monks 
young  Mahomet  conversed  freely  on  religion,  and  a  deep  mutual 
impression  was  made.  At  the  age  of  twenty-five,  Mahomet 
married  Cadijah,  a  widow  fifteen  years  his  senior.  This 
marriage  made  him  a  very  wealthy  man,  and  he  lived  happily 
with  her,  earned  for  himself  the  honourable  title  of  Al  Amin 
(the  Faithful),  and  was  frequently  called  upon  to  act  as  arbiter 
in  disputes  between  his  townsmen.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that 
a  cousin  of  his  wife,  Waraka,  who  became  an  inmate  of  their 
household,  was  a  Jewish  convert  to  Christianity,  an  astrologer, 
something  of  a  philosopher,  and  the  translator  of  parts  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments  into  Arabic.  Such  were  the  tranquil 
circumstances  of  Mahomet's  life  when  its  critical  fortieth 
year  drew  nigh.  In  the  Caaba  at  Mecca  there  were  three 
hundred  and  sixty  idols,  one  for  each  day  of  the  Arab  year. 
' '  Mahomet  grew  more  and  more  conscious  of  the  grossness  and 
absurdity  of  this  idolatry,  as  his  intelligent  mind  contrasted 
it  with  the  spiritual  religions  which  had  been  the  subject  of  his 
inquiries.  The  idea  of  religious  reform  gradually  sprang  up 
in  his  mind.  It  had  become  his  fixed  idea  that  the  only  true 
religion  had  been  revealed  to  Adam  at  his  creation.  .  .  .  This 
religion,  the  direct  and  spiritual  worship  of  one  true  and  only 
God,  had  repeatedly  been  corrupted  and  debased  by  man,  and 
especially  outraged  by  idolatry.  Noah,  Abraham,  Moses, 
Jesus  Christ,  were  prophets  .  .  .  sent  from  time  to  time  to 
restore  it  to  its  original  purity.  The  world  having  once  more 
lapsed,  needed  the  advent  of  another  prophet  authorised  by  a 


NATURAL  VOCATION 


147 


mandate  from  on  high."  So  by  degrees  "  Mahomet  absented 
himself  from  society,  spending  days  and  nights  in  prayer  and 
meditation  in  a  cavern  on  Mount  Kara.  He  became  subject 
to  dreams,  ecstasies,  and  trances."  The  long  incubation 
period  of  his  genius  was  almost  at  an  end. 

Men  like  Mahomet,  although,  in  the  scale  of  human  values, 
rightly  set  far  above  men  of  action,  properly  so  called,  have 
this  in  common  with  them,  that  their  life-history  is  deeply 
involved  in  that  of  their  nation  and  age.  In  considering  their 
conduct,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  distinguish  clearly  what  can 
be  regarded  as  the  spontaneous  outcome  of  inborn  tendency, 
what  is  in  greater  or  less  degree  determined  by  external  influences 
or  events.  Much  the  same  can  be  said  with  regard  to  our  next 
subject,  St.  Francis  d'Assisi ;  but  in  estimating  the  true  initia- 
tive of  such  men,  it  must  carefully  be  observed  how  much  of 
what  we  may  at  first  sight  regard  as  peculiar  to  themselves, 
in  the  matter  of  environment  and  guiding  influence,  was,  after 
all,  to  a  large  extent  shared  by  many  of  their  contemporaries, 
who  yet  failed  to  respond  or  to  find  therein  any  clear  call  to 
creative  work.  The  youth  of  St.  Francis  appears  to  have 
differed  little  from  that  of  other  young  men  of  wealth  and 
position,  yet  there  are  clear  indications  that  his  associates 
were  even  then  conscious  of  the  unique  charm  of  his  personality. 
"  He  was  leader  in  the  mimic  tournaments  of  song  and  jest 
among  the  young  Assisans.  .  .  .  He  was  essential  to  every 
banquet,  every  merry-making,  where  his  quick  repartee,  gift 
of  song  and  joyousness,  radiated  good  fellowship."  I  have 
already  mentioned  the  curious  incident  of  the  eccentric  citizen 
who  spread  his  mantle  for  young  Francis  to  tread  upon,  in 
testimony  of  his  faith  in  the  young  man's  heroic  destiny.  From 
the  first,  too,  he  was  noted  for  his  generosity,  a  quality  never 
found  in  association  with  mediocre  souls.  The  health  and 
morale  of  St.  Francis  were  greatly  impaired  by  a  year's  im- 
prisonment, consequent  upon  an  Assisan  raid  against  certain 
suburban  counts,  between  his  twenty-first  and  twenty-second 
year.  After  a  brief  indulgence  in  reckless  gaiety,  perhaps 
even  dissipation,  he  became  seriously  ill,  and  this  illness  of  his 
twenty-third  year  was  the  true  turning-point  of  his  career. 


148  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Ambition  awoke  within  him,  taking  at  first  a  military  form. 
He  dreamt  of  shields,  arms,  and  banners  marked  with  a  cross, 
and  half -humorously  declared  that  he  was  to  become  a  great 
prince.  He  even  joined  a  military  expedition  under  the  Assisan 
Count,  but  his  weakened  frame  gave  way  under  the  excitement 
and  fatigue,  and  he  turned  back  to  Spoleto.  His  father  was 
angered  by  his  return,  but  a  second  vision  announced  that  the 
arms  and  banners  were  for  heavenly,  not  earthly,  warfare. 
Like  Mahomet,  though  far  earlier  in  life,  he  began  to  shun 
society,  to  spend  long  hours  in  a  cave,  weeping  and  praying. 
He  was  possessed  by  a  passionate  charity,  and  once  meeting  a 
leper,  hardly  human  in  his  disfigurement,  the  newborn  impulse 
for  violation  of  his  natural  fastidiousness  compelled  him  to 
dismount,  to  kiss  the  hideous  bloated  hand,  and  to  fill  it  with 
money.  Henceforth  Poverty  haunted  his  dreams,  and  his 
unformulated  purpose  fiercely  struggled  towards  the  birth.  The 
germ  of  higher  things  had  been  present  in  his  nature  from  the 
first,  and  its  ultimate  development  can  have  been  merely  a 
matter  of  time.  The  keen  zest  of  sensuous  and  social  delights, 
the  innocent  joy  of  mere  living  had  been  killed  out  of  his  delicate 
frame  by  his  imprisonment  and  the  long  illness  that  followed. 
His  brief  plunge  into  less  refined  gaieties  was  an  attempt,  by 
deliberate  stimulation  of  the  exhausted  nerves,  to  revive  the 
sensuous  ecstasy  which  was  lost  to  him  for  ever.  Disappointed 
and  disillusioned,  he  began  to  feel  vague  yearnings  for  something 
to  replace  these  too  transient  joys.  Hence  the  vision  of  martial 
glory,  which  was  not  for  him ;  hence,  too,  the  growing  melan- 
choly ;  the  passion  of  remorse  for  wasted  youth  and  vigour ; 
the  solitary  tears ;  the  strong  impulse  to  charity  and  self- 
abnegation  ;  the  quest  of  an  ideal. 

The  vocation  of  Kenan  was,  from  the  first,  doubtful  only 
in  respect  of  the  revolutionary  form  it  ultimately  assumed.  He 
had  little  or  none  of  the  strong  social  instinct  of  St.  Francis. 
For  thirteen  years  he  attended  the  monastic  school  of  the 
priests  in  his  native  Treguier,  and  was  then  considered  "  the 
good  boy  of  the  college."  Having  done  well  at  home,  he  was, 
at  fifteen,  summoned  by  the  Abbe  Dupanloup  to  the  school 
of  St.  Nicholas  du  Chardonnet  in  Paris,  one  of  the  most  re- 


NATURAL  VOCATION 


149 


markable  institutions  ever  seen  in  France.  There  he  was  initiated 
into  a  quasi-scientific  Catholicism.    His  mother's  dearest  wish 
was  that  her  boy  should  become  a  priest,  and  it  seemed  likely 
to  be  realised,  for  he  was,  to  all  appearances,  one  of  the  most 
devout  of  the  pupils.     "  The  Breton  died  in  me,"  he  tells  us, 
however,  adding,  very  significantly  :    "I  learned  with  stupor 
that  knowledge  was  not  a  privilege  of  the  Church."    From  the 
seminary  of  St.  Nicholas,  Renan  passed  to  the  more  advanced 
college  of  Issy,  to  study  Catholic  philosophy.    He  plunged, 
too,  with  avidity  into  the  metaphysical  writings  of  Reid,  Male- 
branche,  Hegel,  Kant,  and  Herder.     "  I  studied  the  Germans, 
and  I  thought  I  entered  a  temple."    Yes — the  Temple  of  the 
Absolute,  not  of  the  personal  triune  God  of  scholastic  theology. 
The  seeds  of  doubt  were  already  germinating,  and  his  sister 
Henriette,   older  by  twelve  years,  and  already  a  confirmed 
sceptic,  watched  with  breathless  anxiety  the  slow,  timid  growth 
of  his  true  self,  repeatedly  warning  him  not  to  commit  himself 
to  the  priesthood  until  he  was  assured  of  the  soundness  of  his 
faith.    From  Issy,  Renan  passed  to  St.  Sulpice,  to  take  up  the 
study  of  dogma  and  moral  philosophy,  the  Bible  in  Hebrew, 
and  the  mastery  of  the  German  language.     In  his  correspond- 
ence  with   Henriette,    Renan    betrays   vacillation   and   some 
tendency  to  self-sophistication  with  regard  to  his  changing 
views.    After   all,    Malebranche   had   been   a   monk.     "  How 
am  I  to  shatter  bonds  so  mighty  ?     I  can  only  free  myself 
by  piercing  my  mother's  heart."     But  for  Henriette,  indeed, 
it  is  possible  that  he  would  have  given  way.     But  in  1845 
(aet.  23)  he  writes  to  his  director  lamenting  the  loss   of  his 
faith,  professing  love  and  loyalty  to  the  Church,  but  inability 
to  ignore  the  vulnerable  points  in  her  doctrine.     He  declined 
the  proffered  post  of  professor  of  the  Archbishop's  new  Carmelite 
College.    He  plunged,  with  Berthelot,  into  the  study  of  Natural 
Science,  wrote  L'Avenir  de  la  Science,  declared  that  for  him, 
as  for  his  friend,  there  could  be  but  one  religion — the  Worship 
of  Truth.     Veritatem  dilexi  became   the  guiding  principle  of 
his  long  and  laborious  life,  and  was  the  epitaph  which  he  justly 
desired  should  be  inscribed  upon  his  tomb. 

IV.    We  have  now  only  to  consider  our  three  examples 


150  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  men  whose  vocation,  at  first  dubious,  becomes  at  last  pro- 
dominant,  but  not  to  the  point  of  excluding  collateral  activities 
of  greater  or  less  importance.  Of  the  first  of  these,  Frederick 
the  Great,  something  was  said  in  the  last  chapter.  His  education 
was  almost  exclusively  military,  but  for  the  first  seven  years 
of  his  life  he  was  committed  to  the  care  of  Madame  de  Roccule, 
who  spoke  French  only,  and  to  this  in  part  may  be  attribut- 
able his  lifelong  partiality  for  this  language  at  the  expense  of 
his  own,  which  he  always  affected  to  despise.  At  the  age 
of  twelve,  Frederick  manosvured  a  troop  of  cadets  before 
George  i.  at  Berlin  with  surprising  skill.  Almost  from  the 
first  an  inborn  propensity  for  literature  and  music  declared 
itself.  He  applied  himself  closely  to  the  study  and  practice 
of  poetry  and  to  playing  the  flute,  though,  according  to  Vol- 
taire, if  caught  reading  by  his  father,  his  book  would  be  thrown 
into  the  fire  ;  if  indulging  in  music,  his  instrument  would  be 
confiscated  and  broken.  For  sport  he  cared  nothing,  and 
when  supposed  to  be  engaged  in  hunting  he  would  be  holding 
concerts  in  the  forest  or  in  a  cave.  Finally,  the  tyranny  of 
his  father  became  so  unbearable  that  the  wretched  youth 
determined  on  flight.  His  plans  were  divulged  ;  he  was  arrested, 
and  one  of  his  two  accomplices,  Lieutenant  Katte,  was  beheaded, 
Frederick  himself  being  a  compulsory  witness  of  the  death  of 
his  dearest  friend.  The  king  is  alleged  by  Voltaire  to  have 
been  with  difficulty  dissuaded  from  executing  Frederick  also. 
He  was  confined  for  eighteen  months  in  the  citadel  of  Kustrin, 
after  which  time  his  father  visited  him,  they  were  formally  recon- 
ciled, and  henceforth  he  enjoyed  more  latitude  in  regard  to 
his  manner  of  life.  Soon  after  his  twenty-first  birthday  he  was 
forced  by  his  father  to  marry  Elizabeth  Christina,  niece  to  the 
Empress  of  Germany,  who,  however,  seems  to  have  been  his 
wife  only  in  name.  In  his  twenty-fifth  year  he  began  to 
correspond  with  Voltaire,  destined  later  to  play  an  important 
part  among  his  most  intimate  friends — and  bitterest  enemies. 
In  his  twenty-sixth  year  Frederick  reveals  in  a  letter  the  first 
definite  evidence  of  military  zeal  or  ambition.  In  reference 
to  the  exploits  of  Count  Munich  in  the  Turco-Russian  war, 
Frederick  writes  of  that  general  as  the  "  Alexander  of  the 


NATURAL  VOCATION  151 

Age,"  adding,  that  but  for  philosophy,  he  would  see  with  some 
uneasiness  so  many  great  actions  in  which  he  had  no  share.  This 
was  written  during  what  may  have  been  the  happiest  part  of 
Frederick's  life,  the  years  between  his  reconciliation  with  his 
father  and  his  accession  to  the  throne  from  the  twentieth  to  the 
twenty-eighth  of  his  age.  In  his  palace  at  Rheinsberg  there  were, 
Bielfeld  tells  us,  "  royal  cheer,  wine  for  the  gods,  the  music  of 
angels  ;  delicious  pastimes  in  the  gardens,  in  the  woods,  upon  the 
waters ;  the  cultivation  of  letters  and  the  polite  arts,  and  refined 
conversation."  He  tells  us  of  drinking  bouts,  in  which  some- 
times, but  not  often,  both  prince  and  courtiers  exceeded  the 
bounds  of  moderation ;  of  evening  concerts ;  of  balls — for 
Frederick  loved  dancing.  There  was  a  choice  French  library, 
including,  we  may  be  sure,  the  complete  published  works  of 
the  admired  Voltaire.  Count  Algarotti,  who  visited  him  at 
Rheinsberg,  predicted  in  a  letter  to  Lord  Hervey  that  Frederick 
would  show  himself  the  greatest  of  sovereigns  when  he  came 
to  reign.  But  itwas  probablyrather  in  the  character  of  Augustus 
than  of  Alexander  that  he  was  expected  to  appear.  However, 
the  eyes  of  Europe  were  soon  opened.  Frederick  William 
died  in  his  son's  arms  on  30th  May  1740,  when  the 
latter  was  twenty-eight  years  of  age.  An  amazing  revela- 
tion of  the  true  nature  of  this  admirable  Crichton,  this 
anti  -  Machiavellian  Friend  of  Man  and  apostle  of  the 
verities,  this  flute  -  player  and  poetical  dilettante,  was  im- 
mediately forthcoming.  The  King  was  buried  on  the  26th 
June.  A  few  days  after  his  death,  Frederick,  who,  a  couple 
of  years  before  had  become  a  Freemason,  apparently  on  the 
strength  of  some  depreciatory  remarks  made  by  his  father 
about  the  order,  had  held  a  very  illustrious  lodge,  as  it  were 
in  celebration  of  his  freedom.  On  the  very  day  after  the 
funeral  he  disbanded  the  absurd  regiment  of  giants  which  had 
been  the  old  King's  immemorial  hobby.  Next,  he  instituted 
the  Order  of  Merit,  open  to  all,  without  distinction  of  birth, 
religion,  or  country.  He  seized,  on  some  trivial  pretext,  the 
districts  of  Herstal  and  Hermal,  which  for  over  a  century  had 
been  subject  to  the  rule  of  the  Prince-Bishop  of  Liege.  This 
proceeding  was,  by  the  way,  the  ground  of  advice  tendered 


152  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

by  Voltaire,  whom  he  first  met  at  this  time,  to  postpone  the 
publication  .of  his  Anti  -  Machiavel.  In  October  of  the 
same  year  died  the  Emperor  Charles  vi.  leaving  no  male  heir. 
By  the  terms  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  the  succession  was 
guaranteed  by  the  Powers  to  his  daughter,  Maria  Theresa. 
Frederick  at  once  issued  a  manifesto  declaring  it  necessary 
to  enter  Silesia  (one  of  her  guaranteed  territories)  "  to  cover 
it  from  being  attacked,"  protesting  meanwhile  the  utmost 
regard  for  the  "  Queen  of  Hungary's  "  interests.  In  December 
he  duly  entered  the  province  with  an  army  of  30,000  men. 
He  levied  heavy  contributions  on  the  inhabitants,  his  ministers 
at  Vienna  at  the  same  time  demanding  the  cession  of  Silesia 
to  him,  offering  in  return  a  loan  of  two  million  florins  and  his 
influence  in  behalf  of  Maria  Theresa's  husband's  election  to 
the  Empire.  She  naturally  refused  both  demand  and  offers, 
pointing  out  that  his  exactions  in  Silesia  more  than  covered 
the  amount  of  the  proposed  "  loan."  We  need  not  pursue 
further  the  course  of  events,  the  upshot  being  that  after  a  brief 
contest  the  Austrians  were,  for  a  time,  worsted,  and  Silesia 
duly  annexed.1  As  to  the  motives  that  prompted  this  truly 
cynical  piece  of  aggression,  Voltaire  ascribes  the  following 
explanation  to  Frederick  :  "  Ambition,  interest,  and  a  desire 
to  make  the  world  speak  of  me,  vanquished  all,  and  war  was 
determined  upon."  And  no  doubt  this  is  a  perfectly  true 
account  of  the  matter.  It  was,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most  admirable 
qualities  of  Frederick  that,  although  an  adept  in  the  eighteenth 
century  cult  of  abstract  Virtue — Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity, 
Rights  of  Man,  and  the  rest,  although  sometimes,  especially 
in  his  early  "  philosophic  "  days — witness  his  Anti-Machiavel 
— he  could  humbug  others,  and  even  himself,  on  a  superb  scale 
of  impudence,  he  always  tended  to  indiscreet  self-knowledge 
and  self -revelation,  had,  in  short,  the  instinct  of  honesty  in  regard 
to  the  motives  of  his  actions.  Sophistry  was  expected  of  him, 
and  he  supplied  it  in  copious  manifestoes,  but  concocted  it  with 
his  tongue  in  his  cheek.  "  One  may  indeed  lie  with  the  mouth, 
but  with  the  accompanying  grimace  one  nevertheless  tells  the 
truth."  2  Nietzsche,  who  regards  Frederick  n.  as  "  the  first 

1  October  1741.  -  F.  Nietzsche. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  153 

of  Europeans,"  considers  that  the  harsh  treatment  he  received 
from  his  father  was  after  all  prompted  by  a  profound  instinct 
that  the  primary  need  for  Germany  was  in  those  days  not 
culture,  but  manliness.  Germans  were  looked  upon  as  harm- 
less, mild  sentimentalists,  and  as  such  treated  in  international 
matters  with  scant  respect.  For  evidence,  he  adduces  the 
surprised  exclamation  of  Napoleon  on  first  meeting  Goethe — 
"  Voila  un  homme  !  "  As  who  should  say —  "  I  expected  to 
see  a  German,  but  this  is  a  Man."  Had  Frederick's  aesthetic 
and  literary  proclivities  been  encouraged  instead  of  sternly 
repressed,  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  his  "  desire  to  make 
the  world  speak  of  him "  would  have  sought  satisfaction  in 
less  aggressive  mode. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  showed  quite  early  a  decided  artistic 
bent.1  He  never  lacked  confidence  in  his  own  powers,  or 
inclination  to  assert  superiority  to  his  rivals.  Carlyle's  theory 
of  the  unconsciousness  of  men  of  genius  of  their  own  supremacy 
could  be  refuted  by  many  examples.  I  believe,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  even  in  their  childhood  such  men  have  a  dim 
prescience  of  peculiar  destiny,  feel  themselves  impelled  to  at- 
tempt great  things.  Leonardo  relates  how  once,  as  he  lay  in 
his  cradle,  he  thought  a  kite  came  flying  to  him  and  opened 
his  mouth  with  his  tail,  "  wherewith  he  smote  me  many  times 
on  the  lips." 

He  was  probably  about  ten  years  old  when  he  became  a 
pupil  of  Andrea  del  Verrochio  at  Florence,  in  whose  studio  he 
worked  for  some  fourteen  years.  In  his  twenty-seventh  year, 
or  thereabouts,  he  removed  to  Milan,  drawn  probably  by 
report  of  the  magnificence  of  Lodovico  il  Moro.  In  writing 
to  the  Duke  to  proffer  his  services,  Leonardo  thus  fearlessly 
asserts  his  own  competence  and  versatility  :  "  I  believe  that  I 
could  equal  any  other  as  regards  works  in  architecture,  both 
public  and  private.  I  can  likewise  conduct  water  from  one 
place  to  another.  Furthermore,  I  can  execute  works  in 
sculpture,  marble,  bronze,  or  terra-cotta.  In  painting  also  I 

1  It  may,  however,  be  safely  assumed  that  this  was  only  one  among  many 
obvious  tendencies.  His  letter  to  Lodovico  (quoted  below)  proves  that  from 
the  first  he  had  many  irons  in  the  fire. 


154  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

can  do  what  can  be  done  as  well  as  another,  be  he  who  he  may."  * 
At  Milan,  Leonardo  worked  intermittently  for  some  sixteen 
years  on  an  equestrian  statue  of  Francesco  Sforza,  commissioned 
by  the  Duke,  which,  partly  through  lack  of  money  on  the  part 
of  the  patron,  partly  too,  I  think,  on  account  of  a  tempera- 
mental tendency  to  lose  interest  in  his  work  before  completion, 
was  never  finished.  For  the  Duke,  too,  he  undertook,  and  ulti- 
mately (not  without  pressure)  completed,  the  painting  of  his 
magnificent  "  Last  Supper,"  and  for  the  Brotherhood  of  the 
Conception  in  San  Francesco  executed  the  "  Viergeaux  Rochers," 
which,  owing  to  a  disagreement  as  to  price,  he  reclaimed.  He 
also  supplied  a  model  for  the  dome  of  the  Cathedral  at  Milan, 
organised  masques  and  tournaments  on  various  great  occasions, 
and  wrote  his  Treatise  on  Painting — "  the  most  important 
work  on  Art  that  ever  came  from  the  hand  of  an  artist."  For 
Leonardo  the  supreme  excellence  in  Art  is  to  make  the  actions 
express  the  psychical  state  of  each  character,  and  in  this  no 
one  has  ever  excelled,  few  have  equalled  him.  During  his 
residence  at  Milan,  which  lasted  from  his  twenty-ninth  to  about 
his  forty-eighth  year,  Leonardo  also  wrote  a  highly  important 
work  on  the  canalisation  of  Lombardy,  showed  an  intense 
interest  in  all  branches  of  science,  and  eagerly  frequented 
the  society  of  mathematicians,  physicists,  and  philosophers. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  his  allegiance  to  Art  was  gradually 
waning,  and  that  the  quantity — not  perhaps  the  quality — of  his 
output  was  affected.  Later,  in  Florence  (1501,  set.  49),  he 
was  found  by  a  Carmelite  priest  engaged  on  the  St.  Anna 
cartoon.  This  priest  reported  to  Isabella  d'Este  that  Leonardo's 
life  was  "  changeful  and  uncertain,"  that  he  was  "  entirely 
wrapped  up  in  geometry,"  and  had  "  no  patience  for  painting." 
It  was  always  difficult  to  get  a  promise  of  work  from  Leonardo, 
and  still  more  difficult  to  secure  its  fulfilment.  He  often 
became  dissatisfied  with  his  pictures,  as  first  conceived  and  in 
great  part  executed,  and  would  modify  the  pose  of  his  subjects 
in  order  to  perfect  the  expression  of  his  idea.  "  He  cannot 

1  So,  to  the  Building  Committee  of  the  Cathedral  of  Piacenza  he  wrote  later : 
"  There  is  no  one  of  any  worth  (you  may  believe  me),  with  the  exception  of  the 
Florentine,  Leonardo." 


LEONARDO   DA   VINCI. 
Kngrai'edfor  the  EncyclofcrJia  Lomiinensis,  1828. 


NATURAL  VOCATION  155 

tear  himself  away  from  a  picture,"  writes  a  contemporary 
poet,  "  and  in  many  years  scarce  brings  one  to  completion." 
Thus  the  "  Leda  "  was  first  painted  kneeling  alone  ;  then  in 
the  same  posture,  with  the  children  and  a  swan ;  then  half- 
rising,  finally  erect,  clasping  the  swan's  neck  and  looking  towards 
the  children  just  emerged  from  their  shells.  Dr.  Gronau  says 
of  Leonardo,  that  "Nature  herself  had  over-richly  endowed  him, 
as  if  to  present  in  one  model  an  ideal  standard  for  all  time. 
In  this  profusion  of  talents,  this  extraordinary  versatility,  may 
be  found  the  real  reason  why  this  genius  left  behind  him  a 
relatively  small  number  of  art-creations.  Again  and  again 
speculative  meditations  enticed  him  from  his  creative  activities. 
The  number  of  his  works  can  never  have  been  great."  To  his 
friend,  Francesco  Melzi,  he  bequeathed  twenty  notebooks  and 
bound  manuscript  volumes,  for  it  had  been  his  habit  to  carry 
a  notebook  hanging  from  his  girdle,  and  for  forty  years  he  made 
a  practice  of  transcribing  his  random  thoughts.  In  many 
of  these  he  shows  an  extraordinary  power  of  anticipating  the 
future  discoveries  of  science  (e.g.  Galileo's  perception  of  the 
isochronism  of  the  pendulum) ;  also  a  clear  conviction  of  the 
destined  supremacy  of  the  experimental  method.  "  Painter, 
sculptor,  architect,  author,  musician,  mathematician,  botanist, 
astronomer,  maker  of  belles-lettres.  Some  of  these  activities 
he  practised  ;  all  were  potential  in  him."  So  it  inevitably 
happened  that  his  mind  "  renounced  the  practice  of  painting 
through  sheer  compulsion  to  study  its  laws,  passing  from  those 
laws  to  the  quest  of  the  laws  that  govern  the  world." 

Luther,  as  a  boy,  was  timid  and  somewhat  morbidly  con- 
scientious. As  to  this,  it  should  be  noted  that  the  schoolmasters 
of  those  days  were  often  brutal,  and  that  Luther  speaks  of 
having  been  whipped  fifteen  times  in  one  morning !  From 
the  first  he  loved  music,  the  lute  being  his  favourite  instrument, 
and  at  Eisenach  (aged  fifteen)  he  attracted  by  his  beautiful 
singing  the  favour  of  Frau  Cotta,  who  made  him  welcome 
at  her  patrician  table.  Intellectually,  he  showed  distinct 
promise,  and  in  the  study  of  Latin  easily  outstripped  other 
boys  of  his  age.  At  Erfurt  University  his  talent  was  the  wonder 
of  all.  He  began  with  philosophy,  being,  at  this  time,  destined 


156  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

for  the  law,  and  his  obvious  power  and  delight  in  disputation 
would  seem  to  have  justified  the  paternal  choice  of  this  career. 
He  still  devoted  a  good  deal  of  his  leisure  to  music.  Among 
the  Humanists,  with  whom,  at  Erfurt,  he  first  came  into  touch, 
he  ranked  then  as  a  "  philosopher  "  and  a  "  musician,"  not  as 
a  "  poet,"  which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  his  tastes  were 
(mainly)  academic  rather  than  aesthetic.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
two  he  graduated  in  Philosophy,  and  proceeded  to  the  study  of 
law.  But  now  the  morbid  taint  of  superstitious  fear  began 
to  assert  itself.  His  health  was  poor,  and  he  became  subject 
to  fits  of  despair,  in  which  the  temptation  to  blaspheme  God 
often  assailed  him.  He  could  never  wholly  forget  that  an  angry 
Judge,  throned  above,  threatened  his  unregenerate  soul  with 
damnation.  The  crisis  occurred  in  the  same  year  as  his  gradua- 
tion in  Philosophy.  In  June  of  1505  (set.  22),  after  visiting 
his  parents  at  Mansfeld,  he  was,  while  nearing  Erfurt,  surprised 
by  a  terrible  storm.  A  vivid  flash  seemed  to  threaten  instant 
death,  and,  crazy  with  fear,  he  fell  on  his  knees,  crying,  "  Help, 
Anna,  beloved  Saint !  I  will  be  a  monk !  "  The  fatal  words, 
once  uttered,  could  not  be  retracted,  and,  with  grave  misgivings, 
no  doubt,  of  paternal  wrath  (which  were  amply  justified), 
Luther,  a  fortnight  later,  entered  the  Augustinian  convent  at 
Erfurt.  His  father  was  half  -  mad  with  disappointment  on 
learning  of  what  he  considered  the  blighting  of  his  son's  career, 
being,  in  all  probability,  himself  a  Protestant  by  temperament, 
though  a  Catholic,  of  course,  by  profession.  Luther,  however, 
stubbornly  adhered  to  his  decision,  and  in  the  following  year 
took  the  monastic  vow.  His  lifelong  study  of  the  Bible  was  now 
strenuously  begun,  and  his  voluntary  and  enforced  austerities 
further  injured  his  already  bad  health.  Naturally,  therefore, 
the  more  he  searched  his  heart,  the  more  grievously  did  his  real 
or  imagined  sins  afflict  his  conscience.  It  was  perhaps  only 
the  ministrations  of  von  Staupitz,  his  vicar-general,  who  directed 
him  to  what  was  destined  to  become  the  leading  idea  of  his 
doctrine,  salvation  by  faith,  rather  than  justification  by  personal 
rectitude,  which  at  this  juncture  enabled  Luther  to  escape 
religious  melancholia  or  even  suicide.  After  his  ordination 
his  activities  found  an  outward  channel  in  the  form  of  a  lecture- 


NATURAL  VOCATION  157 

ship  in  philosophy  at  Wittenberg,  and  he  gradually  recovered 
his  mental  equilibrium.  In  1511  (set.  28)  he  was  four  weeks 
at  Rome,  and  what  he  saw  there  went  far  to  determine  the 
reforming  zeal  which  in  such  natures  is  the  inevitable  sequel 
of  loathing  and  scorn.  Throughout  his  turbulent  career  he 
retained  his  love  of  music  and  song.  The  instant  and  hearty 
acceptance  by  the  German  folk  of  his  great  hymns,  which 
became  veritable  war-songs  of  the  Reformation,  is  no  doubt 
in  great  measure  due  to  the  fact  that  their  author,  a  musician 
by  birth  and  practice,  had  the  rare  gift  of  writing  lyrics  that 
must  and  will  be  sung. 

A  brief  recapitulation  of  the  results  attained  in  this  and 
the  preceding  chapter  may  conclude  this  part  of  our  subject. 
We  found  that  the  life-history  of  twins  points  to  the  conclusion 
that  inborn  qualities  are  of  much  greater  import  in  deciding 
the  career  than  educational  or  environmental  conditions. 
And  this  conclusion  is  decidedly  confirmed  by  the  evidence 
drawn  from  consideration  of  the  lives  of  our  typical  examples. 
The  "  one-man-one-capacity "  theory  does  not,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  any  means  cover  the  facts,  since  in  many  cases  we 
found  evidence  of  marked  versatility,  and  it  is  even  conceivable 
that  it  may  now  and  then  happen  that  the  capacity  which 
ultimately  becomes  predominant  and  leads  to  distinction  is 
not  that  which  was  originally  the  strongest.  This,  however, 
must  be  very  exceptional,  for  a  strong  inborn  tendency  will  in 
the  long  run  seek  and  find  an  outlet,  even  in  the  face  of  most 
unfavourable  circumstances.  Of  our  forty  examples,  we 
found  that  in  eleven  cases  the  vocation  was  distinct  and  practically 
single  from  the  first ;  in  thirteen  cases  was  decisive  from  the 
first,  but  permanently  associated  with  collateral  activities ; 
in  thirteen  cases  dubious  at  first,  ultimately  decisive  and  single  ; 
in  three  cases  dubious  or  complex  from  the  first,  and  throughout 
the  career. 

We  also  saw  some  evidence  that  suggests,  to  my  mind  at 
least,  that  whereas  great  men  of  action  and  many  artists  are 
often  impelled  by  instinct  to  commit  themselves  to  their  specific 
tasks  long  before  they  can  have  formulated  any  conscious 


158  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

aim  or  purpose,  men  of  the  intellectual  and  ethico-religious  types 
commonly  pass  through  an  experimental  phase,  during  which 
they  turn  their  attention  to  various  activities  not  permanently 
fruitful  or  attractive  in  relation  to  their  genius.  The  rinding 
of  their  work  and  the  formulation  of  a  definite  purpose  are, 
with  such  men,  practically  simultaneous,  and  constitute  a 
free  and  voluntary  act  in  a  higher  sense  than  can  be  said  of 
those  whose  careers  are  pre-determined  by  unconscious  impulse. 
But  this  generalisation  must  not  be  too  strictly  interpreted, 
the  rule,  if  it  be  a  rule,  will  be  subject  to  many  exceptions  and 
qualifications. 


VIII 

THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE 

Significance  of  purpose — I.  Men  of  action — Negative  and  positive  phases  cf 
purpose — II.  ^Esthetic  type. 

A  MAN  who,  by  good  luck  or  in  obedience  to  unreasoned  im- 
pulse, has  become  engaged  in  congenial  activities,  may  certainly 
be  so  far  accounted  happy,  but  in  the  absence  of  clear  self- 
knowledge  and  a  definite  purpose  based  thereon,  must  remain 
in  some  degree  the  creature  of  circumstance,  liable  to  disturb- 
ing influences  which  may  easily  lead  him  astray.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  man  of  purpose,  who,  having  so  far  gauged 
his  own  specific  power  and  his  own  deepest  longing  as  to  discern 
their  ideal  point  of  intersection,  makes  this  the  permanent 
bourne  of  his  endeavours,  has  a  great  and  obvious  advantage. 
He  has  gained  sure  and  lasting  foothold  above  the  waves  of 
transient  things  ;  his  life  has  a  firm  point  d'appui  in  the  depths 
of  immaterial  reality  ;  he  is  no  mere  "  part  of  Nature,"  but, 
in  his  degree,  a  law-giver  and  a  source  of  original  power.  For 
this  reason  there  is  nothing  of  deeper  psychological  interest  or 
significance  than  the  moment  when  a  great  man,  glimpsing  his 
destined  task  in  all  its  alluring  vastness  and  severity,  first 
exclaims  :  "  This  I  will,  and  this,  at  any  cost,  shall  be  I  " 

Goethe  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  Uncle,  in  Meister's 
Apprenticeship,  some  wise  words  on  the  subject  we  are  dis- 
cussing, which  doubtless  represent  his  own  view  of  its  para- 
mount importance.  "  Man's  highest  merit  always  is,  as  much 
as  possible  to  rule  circumstances,  and  as  little  as  possible  to 
let  himself  be  ruled  by  them.  ...  All  things  without  us, 
nay,  I  may  add,  all  things  on  us,  are  mere  elements  ;  but  deep 
within  us  lies  the  creative  force,  which  out  of  these  can  produce 

*S9 


160  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

what  they  were  meant  to  be.  ...  Believe  me,  most  part  of 
all  the  misery  and  mischief,  of  all  that  is  denominated  evil,  in 
the  world,  arises  from  the  fact  that  men  are  too  remiss  to  get  a 
proper  knowledge  of  their  aims,  and  when  they  do  know  them, 
to  work  intensely  in  attaining  them.  .  .  .  Decision  and  per- 
severance are,  in  my  opinion,  the  noblest  qualities  of  man."  *• 

A  genuine  purpose  always  justifies  itself  and  its  procre- 
ative  impulse  by  results,  being,  in  fact,  the  psychical  correlate 
of  actual  growth  in  power,  the  sprouting  into  conscious- 
ness of  a  faculty  rooted  in  subconscious  instinct.  In  the 
vacuum-suspended  scales  where  these  fine  issues  are  weighed, 
a  mote  may  turn  the  balance  ;  yet  the  rise  or  fall  of  an  Empire 
may  be  an  event  of  comparatively  slight  import.  The  moment 
in  which  a  Caesar  crosses — or  does  not  cross,  the  Rubicon — 
what  blood-and-thunder  drama  can  vie  with  it  in  tragic  intensity 
of  interest,  in  pregnant  possibilities  of  glory  or  shame  ? 

Obviously,  it  can  seldom  happen  that  we  are  able  to  discern 
the  precise  moment  when  the  spirit,  hitherto  groping  more  or  less 
unconsciously,  more  or  less  doubtfully  and  tentatively,  towards 
its  true  destiny,  is  first  illumined  by  a  clear  perception  of  its  goal. 
The  crude  methods  of  the  average  biography  afford  no  data 
for  such  precise  and  subtle  diagnosis.  In  some  of  the  greatest 
lives  the  central  motive  seems  to  remain  implicit  from  first  to 
last,  and  only  reveals  itself  in  the  light  of  impartial  survey  of 
the  whole  completed  task.  In  a  few  it  is,  however,  truly  critical 
in  its  first  emergence,  and  some  of  these  cases  have  not  escaped 
observation,  and  should  prove  instructive.  In  most,  by  care- 
fully following  the  clue  of  external  influence  and  internal  develop- 
ment, we  shall  be  able  to  form  at  least  a  rough  idea  of  the  natural 
history  of  the  purpose.  The  scent  may  be  light  and  fugitive, 
but  a  keen  nose  should  in  great  measure  suffice  to  make  good  its 
defects.  It  is,  however,  useless  to  blink  the  fact  that  we  have 
before  us  a  long  and  arduous  chase,  and  those  who  feel  within 
them  a  lack  of  the  true  instinctive  zest  of  venery,  are  counselled 
to  await  us  on  the  edge  of  the  forest,  or,  in  other  words,  to  turn 
to  the  end  of  the  next  four  sections,  where  they  will  find  us 
counting  our  bag. 

1  Op.  cit.,  bk.  vi.  Confessions  of  a  Fair  Saint,  trans,  by  T.  Carlyle. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE    161 

One  further  point  should,  however,  be  noted  at  the  outset, 
as  an  important  corollary  of  what  has  already  been  said.  A 
purpose  is  never  to  be  conceived  of  as  if  it  were  something  fixed 
and  immutable,  but  as  a  living  idea,  which  either  grows  and 
thrives,  or  decays.  A  living  and  thriving  purpose  is  one  whose 
roots  are  ever  piercing  deeper  into  the  nature  of  its  owner,  ever 
spreading  its  branches  wider  throughout  his  thoughts,  words, 
and  actions.  A  man  who  begins  with  the  mere  intention  to 
paint  pictures  because  he  feels  the  power  and  need  of  such 
activity,  comes  by  degrees  to  an  understanding  of  the  some- 
thing within  him  that  needs  to  be  expressed,  the  something 
specific  that  he  alone  can  express.  His  purpose  has  become  a 
motif ;  his  motif  may  become  an  ideal.  And  so  with  every 
other  form  of  so-called  creative  human  faculty — its  purposeful 
use  and  control  are  always  a  factor  making  for  unity,  and 
counteracting  the  influences  that  disintegrate  or  corrode  person- 
ality. 

I.  Men  of  Action. — On  the  death  of  his  father,  Caesar,  a  mere 
boy  at  the  time,  broke  off  his  engagement  with  a  lady  of  fortune 
who  had  been  paternally  chosen  for  him,  and  married  Cornelia, 
daughter  of  the  all-powerful  democrat  Cinna.  This  decisive 
step  seems  to  reveal  at  least  an  intuitive  prevision  of  the  trend 
of  events,  and  that  it  was  not  misinterpreted  by  the  Senatorial 
party  is  proved  by  the  fact  that,  during  the  reaction  which 
followed  the  fall  and  death  of  Cinna,  the  triumphant  Sylla 
vainly  tried  to  compel  Caesar  to  divorce  Cornelia  and  take 
another  wife.  It  is  especially  noteworthy  of  Caesar,  as  evincing 
a  proud  confidence  in  his  powers  and  his  destiny,  that  although 
he  never  failed  to  seize  his  opportunities  and  to  turn  them  to 
full  account,  there  is  an  entire  absence  of  haste  or  avidity, 
rather  a  certain  cool  and  leisurely  air  about  him,  which  masks 
the  real  promptitude  and  keen  resolve  of  his  nature.  He  knew 
when  to  lie  low  and  when  to  emerge,  and  never  appears  on  the 
scene  without  making  his  presence  and  force  felt,  as  by  his  bold 
eulogium  of  Marius,  whose  name  it  was  then  hardly  safe  to 
mention,  spoken  at  the  funeral  of  Julia,  his  own  aunt,  and  the 
great  democrat's  widow.  Later,  as  aedile,  conscious,  no  doubt, 
of  growing  power  and  of  the  turning  tide,  he  ventures  to  restore 
ii 


162  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  trophies,  previously  removed  by  Sylla,  of  the  victories  gained 
by  Harms  over  the  German  tribes.  By  such  provocative  actions 
he,  as  it  were,  tested  the  fear  and  forbearance  of  the  Senatorial 
party,  at  the  same  time  taking  care  to  conciliate  the  populace 
by  a  lavish  expenditure  on  games  and  public  improvements. 
These  games,  by  the  way,  he  threw  to  the  mob,  much  in  the  spirit 
in  which  one  might  throw  a  bone  to  a  mangy  and  savage  dog. 
Like  Marcus  Aurelius,  he  busied  himself  with  his  papers,  hardly 
deigning  to  glance  at  the  orgy  of  blood  which  his  purse  had 
provided.  In  much  the  same  spirit,  no  doubt,  as  of  one  firmly 
availing  himself  of  the  essential  means  to  his  ends,  he,  despite 
his  freely-avowed  scepticism,  sought  and  won  by  a  vast  majority, 
election  to  the  splendid  religious  life-office  of  Pontifex  Maximus. 
In  these  and  many  other  actions,  Caesar  shows  himself  as  one, 
from  the  first,  moving  serenely  and  irresistibly  towards  some 
distant  unrevecded  aim.  The  appearance  may  be — doubtless 
is,  in  some  degree,  deceptive,  but — how  shall  we  lift  the  veil  ? 
Who  knows  when  or  how  it  first  dawned  upon  this  man,  that 
upon  him,  almost  alone,  it  depended  to  avert  political,  social, 
and  Imperial  ruin.  Silent,  Sphinx-like,  he  moved  through  his 
arduous  and  heroic  years,  leaving  his  actions  to  declare  what 
his  lips  were  doubtless  too  proud  to  utter  —  the  passion  of 
loathing  for  what  was,  the  passion  of  desire  for  what  yet  should 
be.  To  such  men  "  virtue  as  attitude  "  is  never  congenial : 
they  would  instantly  have  doubts  about  themselves  if  they  were 
not  misunderstood.  Yet  Mommsen  says,  and  I  think  says 
well,  of  this  "  tyrant,"  that  "  his  aim  was  the  highest  which 
a  man  may  set  before  himself — the  political,  military,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  revival  of  his  own  deeply  fallen  nation, 
and  that  still  more  deeply  fallen  Hellenic  people  which  was 
so  closely  allied  with  his  own." 

Perhaps  it  was  at  first  only  in  obedience  to  his  ambition 
that  he  adopted  the  popular  side.  Perhaps  even  his  endeavour 
to  bring  Dolabella  to  book  for  corrupt  government  of  his  colony, 
and  his  investigation  of  Sylla's  iniquities,  were  in  part  dictated 
by  the  need  of  courting  popularity.  Perhaps  it  was  only  during 
the  long  years  of  his  Gallic  campaigns  that,  contrasting  the 
splendid  loyalty  and  efficiency  of  his  beloved  legionaries  with 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     163 

the  effete  and  factious  anarchy  of  the  Senatorial  and  plebeian 
mobs,  the  full  significance  of  his  task  at  length  dawned  upon 
his  mind.  As  Frederic  Harrison  has  observed  in  regard  to  our 
own  Puritan  Revolution,  a  nation  in  which  the  representatives 
of  force  are  morally  as  well  as  physically  supreme,  has  forfeited 
the  right  to  self-government,  and  must  accept  military  rule. 
In  Caesar  the  true  will  of  the  army  was  incarnate  :  to  be  lord 
of  the  Roman  army  was  to  be  lord  of  the  civilised  world.  In 
the  hour  of  his  triumph  it  was  the  enemies  of  the  State,  not  his 
own  personal  foes,  of  whom  Caesar  purged  the  Senate,  replacing 
them  by  distinguished  colonists,  even  by  Gauls.  One  of  his 
first  acts  was,  indeed,  to  declare  an  amnesty  in  favour  of  all 
who  had  fought  against  him  ;  many  of  the  most  vindictive  of 
his  opponents,  as  Caius  Cassius,  Brutus,  and  Cicero,  were  ex- 
plicitly pardoned,  and  the  statue  of  Pompey  was  restored. 
These  are  not  the  acts  of  a  self-seeking  opportunist,  but  of  one 
who,  in  estimating  the  worth  of  individuals,  has  learned  to 
discount  the  personal  equation,  judging  them  solely  as  factors 
making  or  marring  the  public  weal. 

The  central  purpose  of  Charlemagne,  like  that  of  Caesar, 
can  only  be  inferred  from  his  work.  Of  any  critical  change  in 
his  character,  any  well-marked  sudden  conversion  from  personal 
to  ideal  ends,  there  is  no  trace  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  seems  to 
have  deteriorated  and  coarsened  after  middle  life,  when  the 
restraining  and  softening  influence  of  his  wife  Hildegarde  and 
his  mother  were  withdrawn. 

Pope  Zach  arias  had  been  glad  of  the  support  of  Charles's 
father,  Pepin,  against  Byzantium,  and  the  Lombards,  and  it 
was  in  recognition  of  such  services  that  Pepin  and  his  two  sons 
were  crowned  in  Italy  in  754,  when  Charles  was  ten  years  old. 
Thus  was  founded  the  Carolingian  dynasty,  and  the  policy  of 
co-operation  with  the  Papacy,  which,  sixteen  years  later, 
Charles  and  his  short-lived  brother  inherited  with  the  throne. 
The  task  of  Charles  was  not  merely  to  extend  his  frontier,  which 
he  did  by  the  conquest  of  Saxony,  Brittany,  Bavaria,  Beneven- 
tum,  and  Austria-Hungary,  but  to  weld  into  national  and 
Imperial  unity  the  conflicting  elements  of  his  vast  realm.  To 
do  this  he  must  first  or  last  find  within  himself  a  principle  of 


164  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

growth  and  unity,  a  secret  of  self-culture  and  discipline,  ana- 
logous to  that  required  for  the  objective  problem  of  his  reign. 
Charles,  we  are  told,  loved  no  book  better  (and  he  loved  many) 
than  Augustine's  Civitas  Dei.  There  he  found  the  description 
of  the  perfect  Emperor,  who  holds  his  power  as  something  given 
or  lent  by  God.  The  national  church  in  Francia,  though  wealthy 
and  powerful,  had  for  long  neglected  its  spiritual  and  educa- 
tional responsibilities.  A  revival  initiated  by  Boniface  and 
Willibrod  had  received  the  wise  countenance  of  Charles  Martel 
and  Pepin ;  and  Charlemagne,  on  his  accession,  revealed  his 
practical  sagacity  and  the  sincerity  of  his  devotion  to  religion 
by  the  zeal  with  which  he  encouraged  this  good  cause.  In  his 
first  capitulary,  published  in  769,  the  year  after  his  father's 
death,  he  embodied  a  series  of  injunctions  to  ecclesiastics  for 
the  reform  of  Church  policy  and  administration.  Here,  at  the 
outset,  the  keynote  of  his  whole  career  is  firmly  sounded  by  the 
future  Emperor  (aet.  26) — his  purpose  is  born  in  his  soul.  Five 
years  later,  when  he  visited  the  Holy  City,  before  entering  St. 
Peter's,  where  Pope  Hadrian  awaited  him,  he  knelt  and  kissed 
the  threshold.  There  first,  perhaps,  the  full  possibilities  of  his 
destiny  were  revealed  to  him ;  the  Saxon  war,  which  began  in 
the  ensuing  year,  may  well  have  been  initiated  in  the  spirit  of 
crusade.  Also,  what  he  noted,  by  force  of  contrast,  concerning 
the  deficiencies  of  the  Frankish  Church  in  matters  of  liturgy 
and  ceremonial,  resulted  in  his  importation  of  Italian  choristers, 
and,  indirectly,  in  the  theologico-literary  renaissance  which  was 
one  of  the  chief  glories  of  his  reign.  This  first  visit  of  Charles 
to  the  "  golden  and  Imperial  Rome  "  was  fitly  commemorated 
by  a  medal  showing  himself  and  Pope  Hadrian  clasping  hands 
over  the  Bible  reposing  on  an  altar.  He  was  a  typical  Catholic 
potentate,  and  his  life  a  rude  symphony  expressing  his  deep 
feeling  for  splendid  worship,  spacious  corporate  life. 

It  must  indeed  be  remembered,  as  bearing  on  the  natural 
history  of  purpose,  that  Charles's  first  overtures  to  the  powerful 
national  Church  were  largely  motived,  in  all  probability,  by  the 
desire  to  isolate  his  refractory  younger  brother  and  co-heir, 
Carloman.  But  this  qualification  hardly  applies  to  his  advocacy 
of  the  cause  of  ecclesiastical  and  educational  reform,  and  his 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     165 

patronage  of  the  revivalist  leader,  Abbot  Sturm.  The  great 
Church  dignitaries,  who  were  to  all  intents  and  purposes  mighty 
feudal  lords,  in  many  respects  practically  above  the  law,  could 
hardly  have  welcomed  a  movement  which  proposed  to  enforce 
the  responsibilities  which  had  long  been  conveniently  forgotten. 
Still,  inasmuch  as  the  revivalist  movement  was  favoured  by 
the  Pope,  to  whom  Charles  undoubtedly  looked  as  his  natural 
ally,  self-interest  may  well  have  been  an  element  in  determining 
his  own  favour  to  the  cause.  But  there  is  no  valid  ground  for 
questioning  the  substantial  sincerity  of  his  zeal. 

The  life  of  William  of  Orange  differs  from  that  of  Caesar  or 
of  Charlemange,  in  that  his  main  purpose  became  explicit  at  an 
early  point  in  his  career.  He  enters  upon  the  stage  of  inter- 
national history  as  a  young  man  of  twenty-two,  arm-in-ami  with 
an  Emperor,  in  October  of  1555,  when  Charles  v.  abdicated  in 
favour  of  his  son,  Philip  n.,  at  Brussels.  It  was  a  change  of 
ill-omen  for  Protestants  everywhere,  the  close  of  a  period  of 
genuine  statesmanship,  the  opening  of  a  reign  of  blind  and 
ferocious  bigotry,  but  above  all  a  change  fraught  with  disastrous 
consequences  for  ths  Lutheran  and  Calvinist  inhabitants  of 
William's  own  principality  of  Nassau,  and  for  those  of  the 
Netherlands  in  general.  On  the  other  hand,  it  gave  William  the 
opportunity  of  achieving  a  greatness  which  he  might  otherwise 
have  missed.  Himself  a  Catholic  by  training,  though  born  of 
Lutheran  stock,  he  seems  to  have  been  constitutionally  incap- 
able of  religious  intolerance.  Pontus  Payen  asserts  that  "  the 
Catholics  thought  him  a  Catholic,  the  Lutherans  a  Lutheran." 
It  was  axiomatic  with  William  that  "  the  hearts  and  wills  of 
men  were  things  not  to  be  forced  by  any  outward  power  what- 
ever." Conduct,  not  creed,  was  for  him  the  test  of  human 
value,  and  in  this  respect  he  was,  from  the  first,  several  hundreds 
of  years  in  advance  of  his  time.  At  the  date  of  Philip's  succes- 
sion William  was  serving  the  Empire  against  Henry  n.  of  France, 
spending  the  winters  in  almost  regal  state  in  the  splendid  Nassau 
Palace  at  Brussels.  He  now  became  a  Knight  of  the  Empire 
and  one  of  the  King's  Councillors.  The  war  continued  to 
occupy  most  of  his  time  until  1559,  when  it  was  closed  by  the 
treaty  of  Cateau-Cambresis.  He  was  then  sent  to  Paris  as  one 


166  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  the  hostages  for  the  due  observance  of  the  treaty,  and  there 
it  was  that  he  learned  of  the  horrors  in  preparation  for  the 
"  heretics,"  and  instantly  conceived  the  purpose  which  thence- 
forth remained  the  central  motive  of  his  career.     Henry  and 
Philip  had  batched  a  fine  plan  by  which  the  terrible  Duke  of 
Alva,  one  of  the  first  soldiers  of  the  day,  was  to  extirpate  the 
"  accursed  vermin  "  who  were  so  rapidly  increasing  within  the 
realms  of  both.     The  secret  agreement  with  Alva  was  supposed 
by  Henry  to  be  known  to  William,  and  taking  it  for  granted 
that,  as  a  professed  Catholic,  he  would  be  in  full  sympathy  with 
any  iniquity  practised  in  the  name  of  his  religion,  he  spoke 
freely  and  exultingly  to  him  of  the  good  times  coming.     William 
(henceforward  to  be  known,  inappropriately  enough  in  most 
respects,  as  "  The    Silent ")    said   nothing   that   could  betray 
surprise  or  ignorance,  and  so  learned  all  the  details  of  the  scheme. 
Writing  long  after  in  The  Apology,  he  thus  describes  the  effect 
of  Henry's  revelation  upon  his  mind  :   "I  confess  that  I  was 
deeply  moved  with  pity  for  all  the  worthy  people  who  were 
thus  devoted  to  slaughter,  and  for  the  country  to  which  I  owed 
so  much,1  wherein  they  designed  to  introduce  an  Inquisition 
worse  and  more  cruel  than  that  of  Spain.  ...  It  was  enough 
for  a  man  to  look  askance  at  an  image  to  be  condemned  to 
the   stake.  .  .  .  From  that  hour   I   resolved  with   my  whole 
soul  to  do  my  best  to  drive  this  Spanish  vermin  from  the  land ; 
and  of  this  resolve  I  have  never  repented,  but  believe  that  I, 
my  comrades,  and  all  who  have  stood  with  us,  have  done  a 
worthy  deed,  fit  to  be  held  in  perpetual  honour."     William  was 
now  twenty-six,  and  for  the  next  few  years  he  pursued  a  resolute 
but  guarded  policy  of  opposition  to  the  plans  of  Philip,  agitat- 
ing for  the  formation  of  an  efficient  council  of  State,  ignoring 
the  pressure  constantly  brought  to  bear  upon  him  to  undertake 
the  dirty  work  of  persecution,  restraining  the  violence  of  his 
brother  Louis  and  the  Protestant  Leaguers,  seeking  the  media- 
tion of  the  Emperor  and  the  alliance  of  the  French  Huguenots, 
of  England,   of  the  German  Lutherans,  quelling  at  imminent 
personal  risk  the  wild  insurrection  of  Calvinists  at  Antwerp, 
compelled  at  last  to  resign  all  offices  by  the  Regent's  demand 

1  The  Netherlands,  that  is. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     167 

to  sign  an  oath  undertaking  to  act  against  "  all  and  every  "  for 
Philip  without  reservation.  Then  in  1567  came  Alva  with  his 
punitive  force  of  24,000  veterans,  and  William,  knowing  his 
life  and  cause  at  stake,  left  all  and  retired  to  his  brother's  castle 
at  Dillenburg,  an  outlaw.  Next  year  his  fortunes  were  to 
touch  their  lowest  point.  His  son  has  been  carried  off  to  Spain  ; 
his  invasion  of  Flanders  fails  miserably  ;  his  rearguard  is  cap- 
tured ;  his  German  and  Walloon  mercenaries  desert  him  or 
threaten  to  cut  his  throat ;  he  is  at  his  wits'  end  for  money  ;  is 
constantly  dogged  by  hired  assassins.  To  crown  all,  his  wife 
abandons  him  in  the  hour  of  his  sorest  need,  deaf  to  his  pathetic 
appeal  for  her  "  sweet  consolation."  In  such  fires  was  the  true 
metal  of  this  great  man's  purpose  forged  to  enduring  temper, 
the  purpose  that,  despite  all  appearances  to  the  contrary,  was 
yet,  almost  inexplicably,  to  prevail.  Magical  are  the  effects  of 
a  will  that  fights  on  without  counting  the  cost. 

The  power  of  circumstance,  acting  upon  predisposition 
and  inborn  capacity,  as  an  evoker  and  determinant  of  purpose, 
has  been  clearly  shown  in  the  case  of  William  of  Orange.  In 
comparison,  the  career  of  Drake  appears  vague  and  fortuitous, 
for  the  man  was  of  a  coarser  and  less  exalted  type.  Yet  he  had 
a  purpose,  passionately  felt,  if  never  clearly  avowed.  And  in 
its  formation  the  hand  of  circumstance  can  be  unmistakably 
identified.  To  injure  Spain,  and,  incidentally,  to  enrich  himself, 
by  congenial  employment  of  his  turbulent  masterful  energies, 
were  for  Francis  Drake  the  things  permanently  and  supremely 
worth  while.  All  Spaniards  he  loathed  and  contemned  for  their 
own  sakes,  no  doubt,  but  above  all  for  the  sake  of  the  Papacy 
which  they  championed,  whose  yoke  they  would  fain  have 
refastened  on  the  neck  of  the  world.  Nor  was  the  bitterness 
of  his  hatred  without  show  of  justification.  His  own  father 
had  been  a  preacher  in  Tavistock,  and  had  been  driven  thence 
by  the  persecution  of  Catholic  neighbours.  Then  had  followed 
the  few  but  evil  years  of  Mary's  reign,  when  friends,  perhaps 
kinsmen,  of  the  Drakes  had  forfeited  their  lives  by  opposition 
to  the  Spanish  marriage.  In  the  days  of  his  'prentice  voyages 
to  France  and  Holland,  Francis  must  have  heard  much  talk 
of  the  horrors  of  the  Inquisition  from  the  lips,  perhaps,  of  actual 


168  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Fleming  sufferers.  One  of  his  earliest  voyages  for  the  firm  of 
the  Hawkins  brothers,  was,  as  purser,  to  the  Biscayan  province 
of  Spain.  "  It  seemed  as  though  the  finger  of  Destiny  had 
beckoned  him  there  to  show  the  work  he  was  born  to  do.  At 
St.  Sebastian,  the  chief  port  of  Biscaya,  the  remnants  of  a 
Plymouth  crew  were  at  this  moment  creeping  from  the  pesti- 
lential dungeons  of  the  Inquisition.  In  six  months  half  of 
them  had  rotted  to  death."  It  was  memories  like  these,  and 
the  more  personal  grudge  born  of  the  treachery  which,  at 
La  Hacha,  deprived  him  of  the  frmts  of  his  first  voyage  to  the 
West  Indies,  which  made  of  Drake  "  a  fearful  man  to  the  King 
of  Spain."  But  in  this  "  master  thief  of  the  unknown  world  " 
there  was  also  a  spirit  of  pure  knight-errantry,  a  thirst  for 
new  knowledge  and  the  untrodden  path.  The  greatest 
moments  of  his  life  were,  perhaps,  first,  that  when  as  a  young 
man  of  thirty,  from  the  summit  of  the  Cordilleras,  with  the 
Atlantic  at  his  back,  he  gazed  awe-struck  upon  the  unmeasured 
mystery  of  the  Pacific, — "  and  prayed  God's  leave  to  sail  therein 
one  day  "  :  second,  the  time  some  six  years  later,  when  from 
the  mid-western  coast  of  North  America  he  steered  straight  for 
the  heart  of  that  golden  sea.  For  sixty-eight  days  they  had 
no  sight  of  land ;  once,  grounded  hopelessly  on  a  reef,  Drake 
and  his  men  took  Sacrament  together.  But  in  the  end  the  high 
resolve  was  accomplished,  the  circuit  of  the  globe  completed, 
and  the  South  Sea  sailed  from  side  to  side. 

Pre-eminently  a  man  of  purpose  was  our  next  subject, 
Cardinal  Eichelieu.  Asked  on  his  death-bed  whether  he 
pardoned  his  enemies,  he  replied:  "Absolutely;  and  I  pray  God 
to  condemn  me  if  I  have  had  any  other  aim  than  the  welfare 
of  God  and  of  the  State."  In  a  memorial  drawn  up  towards 
the  close  of  his  long  ministry,  he  thus  records  the  main  objects 
and  achievements  of  his  career  : — 

"  When  your  Majesty  resolved  to  admit  me  to  his  council  and 
to  share  in  his  confidence,  I  can  say  with  truth  that  the  Hugue- 
nots divided  the  State  with  the  Monarchy,  that  the  nobles 
behaved  as  if  they  were  not  subjects,  and  that  the  chief 
governors  of  provinces  acted  as  if  they  had  been  independent 
sovereigns.  ...  I  then  undertook  to  employ  all  my  energy 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     169 

and  all  the  authority  that  you  were  pleased  to  give  me,  to  ruin 
the  Huguenot  faction,  to  humble  the  pride  of  the  nobles,  to 
reduce  all  your  subjects  to  their  duty,  and  to  exalt  your  name 
to  its  proper  position  among  foreign  nations."  National  unity 
based  on  a  despotic  monarchy  at  home  ;  the  ruin  of  the  Haps- 
burg  and  the  substitution  of  the  Bourbon  influence  abroad, 
were  the  two  allied  objects  of  Richelieu's  political  career.  How 
did  he  come  by  this  twofold  purpose,  which,  once  formulated, 
was  so  rigidly  adhered  to,  so  triumphantly  carried  into  effect  ? 
Richelieu  became  Bishop  of  LuQon  in  his  twenty-second, 
and  Councillor  of  State  to  the  Queen-Mother  (Mary  de  Medici) 
in  his  thirty-first  year.  The  interval,  spent  mainly,  up  till 
the  death  of  Henri  iv.,  in  his  provincial  see,  afterward  varied 
by  frequent  visits  to  Paris,  was  the  incubation-period  of 
Richelieu's  genius  and  policy.  Of  the  keenness  with  which 
he  followed  the  course  of  events  there  can  be  no  doubt  what- 
ever, nor  of  the  opportuneness  and  skill  with  which,  at  the 
psychological  moment,  he  took  a  hand  in  the  great  game. 
The  imminence  of  a  death-struggle  between  the  Court  and 
the  nobility  must  have  been  obvious  to  a  much  less  acute 
observer.  What  seems  more  surprising  than  Richelieu's 
recognition  of  the  main  issue,  is  the  fact  that  from  the  first 
he  attached  himself  openly  and  fearlessly  to  what  must  surely 
have  appeared  the  weaker  side.  But  really,  he  could  hardly 
have  chosen  otherwise.  On  the  one  hand  were  the  forces 
of  disruption — the  great  nobles  headed  by  the  Prince  de  Conde 
in  league  with  the  Huguenot  party.  On  the  other  was  the 
traditional  policy  of  strong  central  government,  feebly  up- 
held since  the  assassination  of  Henri  iv.  by  Mary  de  Medici 
and  the  boy  King,  but  all  the  more  tempting,  perhaps,  to  a 
young  and  ambitious  man  conscious  of  his  own  powers,  justified, 
too,  by  success  in  the  past,  and  an  evident  necessity  for  national 
prosperity,  rather  for  national  existence,  in  the  future.  Con- 
sider, too,  the  temperament  of  this  young  aspirant,  his  clear- 
cut,  refined,  and  literary  type— the  type  of  the  lover  of  "  good 
form,"  of  order,  distinction — the  hater  of  all  that  is  demagogic, 
inchoate,  and  obscure.  Richelieu's  episcopal  see  was  not  far 
from  Rochelle,  and  he  could  hardly  have  failed  to  perceive 


i;o  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

that  the  true  aim  of  the  Huguenots  was  the  replacement  of  the 
Monarchy  by  a  federation  of  self-governed  republics.  He,  as 
a  Catholic  priest,  could  not  well  hesitate  between  the  further- 
ance of  such  a  policy  and  that  of  a  restoration  of  the  prestige 
of  the  widen  regime.1  "  The  ruling  sentiment  of  Richelieu's 
career,"  says  Professor  Lodge,  "  was  his  hatred  of  disunion 
and  of  princely  independence."  In  other  words,  his  purpose, 
though  of  slow  growth  and  lifelong  development,  was,  from 
the  first,  deeply  rooted  in  instinct,  and,  for  that  very  reason,  a 
thing  of  lasting  power. 

In  the  growth  of  any  purpose  that  has  an  ideal  basis,  im- 
plicit or  self-avowed,  in  the  growth  of  any  purpose,  therefore, 
truly  worthy  of  the  name,  there  will  often  be  found  two  well- 
defined  phases.  First,  a  negative  or  destructive ;  second, 
a  positive  or  constructive,  period  ;  first,  a  rebellion  against 
intolerable  conditions,  culminating  perhaps  in  their  complete 
subdual :  second,  an  attempt,  more  or  less  logically  founded 
and  wrought  out,  at  the  substitution  of  a  new  and  higher 
order  of  things.  In  the  case  of  Csesar,  the  constructive 
tendency,  though  always  latent  and  often  emerging  to  view, 
had  full  scope  only  for  the  last  year  or  two  of  his  life.  William 
of  Orange,  Caesar  too,  for  that  matter,  died  prematurely ;  but 
the  former,  by  his  temporary  success  in  federating  his  seventeen 
provinces  of  the  Netherlands  oh  a  basis  of  religious  tolerance, 
and  resistance  to  the  Spaniards,  clearly  showed  the  instinct 
of  constructive  statesmanship.  Oliver  Cromwell,  with  whom 
we  are  next  concerned,  is,  in  this  respect,  however,  a  far  better 
example  of  the  development  of  purpose. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  affair  which,  in  his  thirty- 
first  year,  led  to  the  appearance  of  Cromwell  before  the  Privy 
Council,  and  to  his  apology  for  the  violence  of  his  protest  against 
certain  reactionary  changes  in  the  civic  government  of  Hunt- 
ingdon. Also,  I  mentioned  the  significant  fact  of  his  refusal 
to  appear  at  the  coronation  of  Charles,  or  to  accept  knight- 
hood. It  is  obvious,  from  these  facts,  as  well  as  from  his 
custom  of  keeping  open  house  for  recalcitrant  clergy,  that, 

1  On  the  propensity  of  priests  in  general  to  the  government  of  a  single 
person,  vide  Hume's  Essay  on  "  The  Parties  of  Great  Britain." 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     171 

long  before  he  entered  upon  his  public  life,  Cromwell  was  taking 
a  keen  interest  in  the  trend  of  events,  and  was  whole-heartedly 
sympathetic  with  the  Puritan  cause.      Consequently,  when  in 
his  forty-first  year  he  entered    the  Long  Parliament,  he  was 
fully  prepared  to  take  an  active  part.     The  fact  that  this  was 
Cromwell's  third   election   to   Parliament,  certainly  seems  to 
show  at  least  some  vague  intention  to  adopt  a  political  career, 
though  to  a  man  of  his  substantial  position  it  might  not  mean 
much.     There  is  no  evidence  of  personal  ambition  of  the  de- 
finite concentrated  kind,  such  as  we  find  in  the  case  of  Riche- 
lieu,   for   example.    His    own    advancement    seems,    in    fact, 
rather  to  have  been  a  means  than  an  end  with  Cromwell.    It 
was  accepted  rather  than  deliberately  sought.    The  end  in 
view,  at  first,  was  merely  to  meet  and  effectually  deal  with 
every  emergency  as  it  arose,  not  looking  farther  ahead  than 
was  necessary  in  order  to  provide  for  obvious  contingencies. 
On  the  outbreak  of  the  first  civil  war  (1642,  eet.  43),  Cromwell 
threw  himself  impetuously  into  the  work  of  organising  the 
defence  of  his  district,  and  for  the  ensuing  nine  years  was 
almost  constantly  in  the  field,  first  as  captain  of  a  troop,  then 
colonel  of  a  regiment,  general  of  cavalry — at  last,  leader  of 
an  army.     One  of  the  greatest  inspirations  of  Cromwell's  life 
was  that  which  resulted  from  his  perception  of  the  useless- 
ness  of  "  decayed  serving  men  and  tapsters,  and  such  kind 
of   fellows,"    against  the   blue-blooded   cavaliers,    and   led   to 
the  remodelling  of  his  regiment  and  ultimately  of  the  Puritan 
army.     "  I  raised  such  men  as  had  the  fear  of  God  before  them, 
as  made  some  conscience  of  what  they  did ;   and  from  that  day 
forward  they  were  never  beaten,  and  wherever  they  were  en- 
gaged against  the  enemy  they  beat  continually."     Truly,  as 
Frederic  Harrison  remarks,  "  the  issue  of  the  whole  war  lay  in 
that  word."     Most  of  these  men  would  be  "  Independents  in 
Religion,"  more  or  less  fanatical,  whereas  the  generals  approved 
by     Parliament     were     Presbyterian     moderates.     Cromwell, 
hitherto  a  man  of  passion  rather  than  of  purpose,  was  now 
rapidly   gaining    self-confidence   and    the    feeling    of    national 
responsibility.     He  saw  that  the  influence  of  Parliament  was 
a  dead- weight  upon  the  cause,  and  by  means  of  the  "  Self- 


172  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

denying  Ordinance "  enforced  the  resignation  of  such  luke- 
warm commanders  as  Manchester  and  Essex,  and  the  dethrone- 
ment of  the  Presbyterian  interest.  The  "  New  Model "  was 
passed  for  the  army.  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  was  made  Com- 
mander-in-Chief,  and  Cromwell,  though  as  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment disqualified  by  the  Ordinance  from  serving,  was,  no 
doubt  by  pre-arrangement,  invited  to  retain  the  second  com- 
mand. Second  in  name,  that  is  ;  in  reality  he  was  now  supreme 
in  the  army,  which,  in  its  remodelled  state,  was  the  incarnate 
spirit  of  the  English  Revolution.  The  Parliament  had  grown 
quite  out  of  touch  with  public  opinion,  and  from  this  hour  its 
authority  wanes,  and  that  of  the  army  correspondingly  increases. 
But  even  yet  Cromwell's  programme,  and  even  the  destructive 
phase  of  his  purpose,  are  incomplete.  For  a  long  time,  after 
Naseby  and  after  the  surrender  of  Charles,  he  favours  a  restora- 
tion of  the  monarchy,  strives  for  the  King  so  zealously  as  to 
risk  reputation,  power,  even  life  itself,  by  the  resentment  of 
the  extremists.  But  when,  on  the  eve  of  the  second  civil  war, 
he  at  last  discovers  that  all  along  the  King  has  been  playing 
him  false,  he  at  once  denounces  him  in  Parliament,  and 
tramples  underfoot  the  very  notion  of  compromise.  The 
second  war  was,  for  Cromwell,  Charles's  unpardonable  sin  : 
henceforth,  for  him,  Charles  is  the  "  Man  of  Blood,"  and  the 
Presbyterian  party  in  Parliament  are  his  accomplices.  The 
King's  cunning  played  him  a  very  ill  .turn  when  it  induced 
him  to  try  to  make  a  tool  of  Cromwell. 

So  much  for  the  negative  phase  of  Cromwell's  purpose,  an 
evasive  entity  throughout,  it  must  be  confessed.  The  fanat- 
ical element  in  his  nature  finally  blazed  out  in  his  Irish  ex- 
pedition, a  piece  of  bloody  opportunism,  of  which  the  least  said 
the  soonest  mended. 

The  principle  of  unity  underlying  Cromwell's  actions  hitherto 
is  undoubtedly  to  be  found  in  his  religious  motive.  After 
the  Scots  campaign,  the  southward  flight  of  Prince  Charles, 
and  Cromwell's  culminating  triumph  at  Worcester,  a  new  era 
begins.  His  task  now  was  "  to  control  the  Revolution  which 
he  had  led  to  victory."  And  it  was  no  light  one.  Two  years 
before,  "  by  lightning  rapidity,  by  instant  decision,  by  terrible 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE    173 

sternness,  with  complete  control  of  temper,"  he  had,  at  the 
cost  of  only  four  executions,  suppressed  the  dangerous  risings 
of  the  Levellers.  That  was  his  first  sharp  lesson  as  to 
the  necessary  limitation  of  religious  individualism,  as  to  its 
atomistic,  disintegrating  trend.  A  second  object-lesson  was 
afforded  by  the  so-called  Little  Parliament  of  1653,  consist- 
ing of  some  one  hundred  and  forty  Notables,  "  persons  fearing 
God,"  summoned  by  Cromwell  himself.  During  its  five  months' 
sitting  it  raised  all  sorts  of  burning  questions,  alarmed  every 
interest,  aroused  every  class  ;  and  Cromwell  cannot  but  have 
breathed  a  long  sigh  of  relief  when,  perceiving  its  own  un- 
popularity, it  wisely  resigned.  He  never  again  risked  a  "  Reign 
of  the  Saints."  Nor  did  these  experiences  betray  him  into 
any  reactionary  interference  with  what  he  considered  legitimate 
freedom  of  conscience.  "  Stoutly  he  contended  with  Parlia- 
ments and  Council  for  Quakers,  Jews,  Anabaptists,  Socinians, 
and  even  crazy  blasphemers."  Even  more  conclusive  as  to 
his  growing  tolerance  is  the  fact  that  "  he  satisfied  Mazarin 
that  he  had  given  to  Catholics  all  the  protection  that  he  dared." 
The  grand  success  achieved  in  these  master  years  of  the  Pro- 
tectorate was  in  fact  largely  due  to  a  profound  modification  of 
his  attitude  towards  life,  motived,  no  doubt,  by  the  extreme 
complexity  of  his  problem  and  his  task.  It  was  not  that  he 
was  less  religious,  but  that  his  religion  had  been  humanised, 
that  he  had  learned  "  relativity."  He  mellowed  with  age — 
grew  more  sociable,  held  weekly  concerts,  and  was  open-handed 
with  his  wealth.  Summing  up,  we  may  say  of  Cromwell  that 
his  purpose  was,  from  beginning  to  end,  progressive,  thoroughly 
adaptable,  and  rooted  in  a  grand  and  simple  sincerity  of  religious 
motive.  The  purpose  was  the  man.  He  was  one  who  never 
crossed  a  river  until  he  came  to  it ;  witness  his  perfect  willing- 
ness to  entertain  the  question  of  accepting  the  crown,  but 
ultimate  refusal  of  it,  because  he  could  feel  no  "  clear  call " 
to  accept  it.  "  He  never  was  greater  than  in  refusing  a  dignity 
which  would  have  taken  all  meaning  out  of  the  Puritan 
Revolution." 

With  regard  to  our  next  and  very  different  subject,  Frederick 
the  Great,  and  his  purpose,  the  following  from  Nietzsche's 


174  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Beyond  Good  and  Evil l  is  worth  quoting  :  "  That  unscrupulous 
enthusiast  for  big  handsome  grenadiers,  .  .  .  the  problematic, 
crazy  father  of  Frederick  the  Great,  had  on  one  point  the  very 
knack  and  lucky  grasp  of  genius  :  he  knew  what  was  then  lacking 
in  Germany.  .  .  .  His  ill-will  to  the  young  Frederick  resulted 
from  the  anxiety  of  a  profound  instinct.  Men  were  lacking, 
and  he  suspected  to  his  bitterest  regret  that  his  own  son  was 
not  man  enough.  There,  however,  he  deceived  himself :  but 
who  would  not  have  deceived  himself  in  his  place  ?  He  saw  his 
son  lapsed  to  atheism,  to  the  esprit,  to  the  pleasant  frivolity 
of  clever  Frenchmen — he  saw  in  the  background  the  great  blood- 
sucker, the  spider  scepticism,  he  suspected  the  incurable 
wretchedness  of  a  heart  no  longer  hard  enough  either  for  evil 
or  good,  and  of  a  broken  will  that  no  longer  commands,  is  no 
longer  able  to  command.  Meanwhile,  however,  there  grew  up 
in  his  son  that  new  kind  of  harder  and  more  dangerous  scepticism 
— who  knows  to  what  extent  it  was  engendered  just  by  his  father's 
hatred  and  the  icy  melancholy  of  a  will  condemned  to  solitude  ? 
— the  sceptism  of  daring  manliness,  which  is  closely  related  to 
the  genius  for  war  and  conquest,  and  made  its  first  entrance 
into  Germany  in  the  person  of  the  great  Frederick.  This 
scepticism  despises  and  nevertheless  grasps  ;  2  it  undermines, 
and  takespossession  ;  it  does  not  believe,  but  it  does  not  thereby 
lose  itself  ;  it  gives  the  spirit  a  dangerous  liberty,  but  it  keeps 
strict  guard  over  the  heart ;  it  is  the  German  form  of  scepticism." 
Frederick's  own  cynical  avowal  of  the  motives,  "  ambition, 
interest,  and  a  desire  to  make  the  world  speak  of  me,"  which 
prompted  his  unprovoked  attack  upon  the  Silesian  territory 
of  the  Queen  of  Hungary,  has  already  been  mentioned,  and  is 
a  striking  confirmation  of  Nietzsche's  diagnosis.  As  often 
happens  where  the  dispositions  of  the  two  parents  are  strongly 
antithetical,  that  part  of  his  nature  which  Frederick  inherited 
from  his  father  seems  for  a  long  time  to  have  remained  latent, 
unsuspected  even  by  himself.  It,  however,  was  all  the  time 

1  Helen  Zimmern's  translation. 

2  "  And  so  should  we  do  also,  having  the  carefulness  of  the  most  zealous 
players  and  yet  indifference,  as  were  it  merely  about  a  ball "  (Epictetus). 
Thus  extremes  meet ! 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     175 

assimilating  the  results  of  the  strict  and  thorough  military 
training  which  he  received,  and  the  highly  specialised  ability 
thus  gradually  built  up  could  not  fail,  sooner  or  later,  to  demand 
an  outlet.  Meanwhile  the  sentimental  (?  maternal)  factors 
were  upon  the  whole  weakening  rather  than  strengthening  ; 
and  their  furtive  but  free  indulgence  at  last  culminated  in 
disgust  and  satiety.  Life  might  not  be  worth  much,  but  he 
would  not  waste  it  in  flute-playing  and  philosophising  alone. 

The  first  great  shock  must  have  been  the  sight  of  the  exe- 
cution of  his  dearest  friend,  Katte,  upon  whom  his  brutal  father 
visited  the  vengeance  which  he  was  with  difficulty  dissuaded 
from  wreaking  upon  young  Frederick  himself.  Frederick,  who 
was  then  a  youth*  of  eighteen,  is  said  to  have  fainted  at  the 
time.  If  the  immediate  effects  of  such  a  blow  were  great — 
what  must  not  have  been  the  ultimate  coarsening  and  hardening 
results  upon  the  morale  of  a  highly  sensitive  and  reflective 
temperament  ?  Complete  disillusionment  (as  he  understood 
it)  was  no  doubt  what  the  father  aimed  at  for  the  erring  son  ; 
and  in  the  end,  after  a  good  many  more  years,  it  was  attained  and 
over-attained.  It  almost  seems  as  though  Frederick  delayed 
coming  forward  until  immediately  after  his  father's  death,  so 
that  the  latter  might  not  have  the  satisfaction  of  perceiving 
how  well  he  had  succeeded.  But  there  is  a  touch  of  savage 
resentment  (evidencing  the  bitterness  of  his  many  wounds) 
in  the  promptness  with  which  Frederick  held  a  grand  masonic 
lodge  (the  old  King  hated  freemasonry),  and  disbanded  the 
cherished  regiment  of  giants  almost  before  the  royal  corpse 
was  cold.  There  was,  as  it  were,  a  farewell  demonstration 
of  the  old  self ;  the  new  self,  long  weary,  no  doubt,  of  the 
elegant  frivolities  which  Bielfeld  had  found  so  ecstatic  in  the 
"  enchanting  palace  "  of  Rheinsberg,  the  cold,  keen,  sceptical 
Machiavellian,  energetic,  ambitious,  ruthless,  deliberately 
grasping  self,  was  now  to  be  revealed  to  an  astounded  and 
scandalised  world.  In  such  a  mood,  the  first  opening  for 
self-assertion,  for  aggression,  which  chanced  to  be  the  death 
of  the  Emperor  Charles  vi.  (leaving  no  male  heir),  could  not  fail 
to  be  adopted.  Silesia  was  not  his,  but  he  believed  that  he 
could  take  it,  and  that,  once  taken,  the  moralists  whom  he 


176  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

despised  would,  as  usual,  justify  the  accomplished  fact.  "What 
perhaps  he  failed  fully  to  realise  was,  that  this  single  initial 
act  of  aggression  would  embark  him  upon  a  career  of  lifelong 
struggle,  from  which  there  could  be  no  possible  rest  or  with- 
drawal. But  so  it,  of  course,  proved  :  hence,  in  understanding 
the  motives  which  impelled  him  to  this  first  step,  we  have 
really  learned  as  much  as  we  need  to  know  concerning  what 
must  pass  for  the  "  purpose  "  of  Frederick.  On  its  negative 
side,  at  least,  for  in  essence  the  military  career  of  this  man  is 
nothing  else  than  destructive  criticism  of  the  traditional  morality 
current  in  his  and  our  day. 

The  positive  phase,  though  much  less  marked,  is  not,  how- 
ever, to  be  overlooked-  One  of  the  most  remarkable  proofs  of 
his  greatness  is  the  energy  with  which,  after  twenty-two  years 
of  nearly  continuous  warfare,  Frederick,  immediately  upon  the 
conclusion  of  peace,  threw  himself  heart  and  soul  into  the  work 
of  national  reconstruction  and  reorganisation.  He  was,  upon 
the  whole,  true  to  enlightenment,  as  he  came  to  understand 
it ;  and  if  in  his  contemptuous  disregard  of  accepted  standards 
of  public  and  private  morality  he  is  the  exemplar  of  eighteenth 
century  scepticism,  he  is  an  eighteenth  century  positivist 
in  his  rebuilding  of  Berlin,  the  doubling  of  his  dominion,  the 
trebling  of  his  population,  the  colonisation  by  42,000  families 
(mostly  immigrants)  in  five  or  six  hundred  new  villages  of 
120,000  acres  of  reclaimed  land,  the  endowment  of  Agriculture, 
the  creation  of  new  industries,  the  impartial  tolerance  (combined 
with  contempt)  of  all  religions,  the  encouragement  of  Art, 
Science,  and  Letters,  the  preference  of  ability  to  rank,  the 
scorn  of  convention  and  flunkeydom,  the  codification  of  Law. 
and  the  reform  of  legal  procedure.  The  question  whether 
these  benefits  were  worth  what  they  cost  in  blood  and  anguish, 
would  no  doubt  be  answered  by  his  many  victims  with  a  flat 
denial.  Still,  they,  no  less  than  the  horrors  that  cleared  the 
ground  for  them,  were  implicit  in  the  mental  attitude  in  which 
he  set  about  his  arbitrarily  adopted  task.  They  were,  no 
doubt,  in  some  sense  or  degree,  a  part  of  his  programme  from 
the  first. 

Although,  like  Frederick,  a  man  inspired  by  a  craving  for 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     177 

personal  distinction  rather  than  by  any  ideal  end,  Nelson  is,  in 
certain  respects,  almost  the  antithesis  of  the  Prussian  hero. 
In  all  that  concerned  his  profession,  at  least,  Nelson  was  pre- 
eminently a  chivalrous  man,  whereas  Frederick's  career  might 
be  interpreted  as  constituting  in  essence  a  challenge  and  refuta- 
tion of  the  chivalrous  ideal.  Frederick  was,  in  fact,  the  initiator 
of  the  most  popular  cult  of  our  age,  the  Religion  of  Getting  on  at 
any  price — to  other  people's  interests  and  one's  own  honour. 
Witness  his  false  accusation  of  the  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany  of 
instigating  his  assassination,  agreeing  with  one  of  the  cynical 
suggestions  of  his  own  Military  Instructions  ; *•  witness,  too, 
his  repudiation  of  treaty  obligations  with  our  government,  and 
of  promises  to  the  Elector  of  Saxony ;  witness,  above  all,  his 
outrageous  treatment  of  the  Queen  at  Dresden,  culminating  in 
the  stealing  of  state  papers  from  an  ostensibly  friendly  Power. 
To  a  chivalrous  man — to  Nelson,  for  example — though  he  might 
be  every  whit  as  keen  on  personal  triumph,  any  one  of  these 
things  would  have  been,  not  merely  repugnant,  but  impossible. 
He  could  not  have  done  them,  or  even  have  contemplated  the 
idea  of  doing  them.  And  when,  for  want  of  a  better,  I  use  the 
word  chivalry,  I  am  speaking  not,  be  it  observed,  of  any 
ephemeral  affectation  of  romantic  origin,  but  of  a  fundamental 
quality  of  the  best  and  highest  natures.  Caesar,  for  example, 
was  a  most  chivalrous  man ;  he  disdained  to  profit  by  reading 
the  captured  correspondence  of  his  enemy  Pompey  at  Pharsalia 
or  of  Scipio  in  Africa,  to  distinguish  between  friends  and  foes 
in  recommending  candidates  for  promotion,  or  to  safeguard  his 
own  person  against  obvious  danger  of  assassination.  Chivalry 
is  nothing  else  than  the  highest  form  of  generosity,  based  on 
courage — the  courage  that  will  risk  whatever  is  most  prized, 
rather  than  violate  honour  or  take  a  mean  advantage.  It  is, 
in  short,  a  manifestation  of  the  cult  (a  cult,  rather)  of  all  noble 
souls — the  Religion  of  Self-Respect.  Frederick  had  no  chivalry 
in  him ;  how  could  the  son  of  such  a  father  have  had  any  ? — 
and  but  that  he  was  a  King,  would  not  have  been  considered 
a  gentleman.  Nelson  had  so  much  that  those  who  utterly  fail 

1  "  It  may  not  be  improper  to  accuse  the  enemy  of  the  most  pernicious 
designs." — Op.  eit. 
12 


178  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

to  understand  him  have  regarded  it  as  mere  pose  and  affectation, 
conceiving  it  impossible  that  a  man  so  ambitious  could  at  the 
same  time  be  so  Quixotic.  But  ambition  and  self-respect  are 
both  rooted  in  the  same  fundamental  quality  of  pride  ;  and  it 
is  therefore  in  no  way  surprising  that  where  one  is  present  in 
excess,  the  other  should  be  also. 

That  Nelson  was  from  a  very  early  age  determined  to  make 
a  name  for  himself,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever.  This,  in 
fact,  was  throughout  life  the  purpose  which  he  kept  steadily 
before  him,  the  mainspring  of  all  his  thoughts  and  actions.  It 
is  told  of  him  as  a  boy  that  he  once  robbed  his  schoolmaster's 
garden,  not  because  he  wanted  the  pears,  of  which,  indeed,  he 
refused  to  partake,  but  simply  because  his  companions  were 
afraid  to  take  them.  After  the  siege  of  Calvi,  where  he  lost  the 
sight  of  his  right  eye,  Nelson  wrote  :  "  They  have  not  done  me 
justice.  But  never  mind,  I'll  have  a  Gazette  of  my  own." 
And  to  his  wife  :  "  One  day  or  other  I  will  have  a  long  Gazette 
to  myself."  Off  Cape  St.  Vincent  he  boarded  the  San  Joseph, 
exclaiming,  "  Westminster  Abbey  or  Victory  !  "  On  the  eve  of 
the  battle  of  the  Nile  he  said,  "  Before  this  time  to-morrow  I  shall 
have  gained  a  peerage  or  Westminster  Abbey."  But  though 
it  is  abundantly  clear  that  personal  distinction  for  its  own  sake 
was  the  guerdon  for  which  Nelson,  over  and  over  again,  staked 
health,  life,  even  reputation,  with  the  reckless  abandon  of  a 
gambler,  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  honour  and  duty,  as 
he  simply  and  loyally  understood  these,  he  would  never  have 
staked.  On  the  contrary,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  by  his 
loyalty  to  both,  by  his  resolute  enforcement  of  the  Navigation 
Acts  against  American  traders  in  the  West  Indies,  and  by  his 
exposure  of  the  wholesale  robbery  practised  there  by  the  con- 
tractors who  supplied  the  Navy,  he  at  an  early  and  critical 
period  in  his  career  made  powerful  enemies,  who,  by  raising 
prejudice  against  him  at  the  Board  of  Admiralty,  materially 
delayed  his  advance  in  his  profession.  In  enforcing  the  Naviga- 
tion Acts  against  American  traders — foreigners  they  had  made 
themselves,  and  as  foreigners  they  should  be  treated — Nelson 
had  to  act  in  defiance  of  the  military  governor,  and,  eventually, 
of  his  own  admiral.  "  I  must  either  disobey  my  orders  or 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     179 

disobey  Acts  of  Parliament.  I  determined  on  the  former." 
On  his  seizing  the  American  vessels,  proceedings  were  taken 
against  him  (a  mere  boy  of  twenty-eight)  for  damages  of  £40,000, 
and  attempts  were  made  to  arrest  him.  In  the  end  the  Treasury 
took  up  his  defence,  and,  his  point  duly  carried,  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  was  thanked  for  his  activity  and  zeal  in  protecting  the 
commerce  of  Great  Britain  !  Nelson's  bitter  comment  was 
amply  justified.  "  I  either  deserved,"  he  said,  "  to  have  been 
sent  out  of  the  Service,  or  at  least  to  have  had  some  little  notice 
taken  of  what  I  had  done."  His  official  reception  was,  in  fact, 
so  obviously  cool,  on  returning  from  this  three  years'  valuable 
service  at  the  West  Indies,  that  it  nearly  resulted  in  his  leaving 
the  Navy.  I  mention  these  facts,  which  ought  to  be  familiar 
to  all  English  readers,  because  of  late  some  sorry  attempts 
have  been  made  to  belittle  the  patriotism  of  Nelson  as  mere 
bombast  and  theatricality.  The  lustre  of  patriotism  is  in  these 
days,  truly,  a  little  tarnished,  the  virtue  itself  suspect  by  not  a 
few  worthy  people,  but  it  still  has  its  place  in  the  cosmic  scheme. 
Too  pronouncedly  a  universalist  point  of  view  would  be  of 
doubtful  advantage  to  any  great  sailor  or  soldier,  and  in  the 
Nelsonic  age  was,  for  such  men,  frankly  inconceivable.  And  to 
expect  from  Nelson  the  buckram  impassivity  of  Wellington,  is 
like  asking  from  the  lyric  genius  of  a  Shelley  the  epic  (or  bovine) 
imperturbability  of  a  Wordsworth. 

Nelson  was  a  born  sailor  if  there  ever  were  one,  but  the  idea 
of  going  to  sea  seems  to  have  been  suggested  to  him  by  the 
fact  that  his  maternal  uncle  was  in  command  of  the 
Raisonnable.  It  is  interesting  to  speculate  as  to  whether, 
had  Nelson  chosen  some  other  career,  he  would  have 
attained  analogous  distinction.  His  father  believed  that  he 
was  born  to  excel,  and  in  any  active  pursuit  (for  he  was 
not  really  intellectual)  he  would,  I  believe,  have  forced  himself 
to  the  front.  A  fighter  he  must  always  have  been  ;  he  would 
have  fretted  his  heart  out  in  the  rut  of  a  tame  and  sedentary 
security. 

The  purpose  of  Napoleon  ?  A  big  book  might  be  written  on 
the  subject  without  exhausting  its  infinite  possibilities  or 
straightening  out  its  perplexing  ambiguities.  The  difficulty 


i8o  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

with  Napoleon  is,  that  he  was  a  man  of  moods  and — an  Italian. 
What  he  said  about  himself — and  this  was  his  favourite  topic 
— is  only  to  be  trusted  when  it  is  confirmed  by  his  actions. 
Was  he  in  sober  truth  a  man  of  purpose  at  all,  or  only  a  sublime 
adventurer  ?  We  are  told  that  in  his  boyhood  he  was  full 
of  self-love  and  of  unbounded  aspirations.  Something  of  a 
dreamer,  no  doubt,  like  many  other  boys — but  with  a  difference. 
And  of  what  did  he  dream  ?  To  answer  this  question  we  need 
first  to  inquire — what  books  did  he  love  ?  Solid  reading  in 
general,  and  in  particular,  Bossuet's  Discourses  of  Universal 
History)  it  appears.  "  On  the  fortunate  day,"  says  (I  think) 
Lord  Rosebery,  "  when  he  happened  on  the  Discourses, 
and  read  of  Caesar,  Alexander,  and  the  succession  of  Empires, 
the  veil  of  the  temple  was  rent  and  he  beheld  the  movements 
of  the  gods."  Somewhat  later,  his  military  education  having 
well  begun,  we  find  him  proficient  beyond  his  years  in  geography 
and  mathematics,  also  in  his  leisure  moments  imbibing  litera- 
ture of  a  decidedly  Jacobinical  tendency.  It  was,  perhaps, 
the  influence  of  Rousseau  l  which  awoke  what  proved  a  very 
fleeting  sympathy  with  the  nationalist  movement  in  Corsica, 
and  led  to  the  vain  efforts  of  Paoli  to  enlist  him  in  the  cause. 
Already,  at  twenty-three,  he  is  disgusted  by  the  subserviency 
of  the  hapless  Louis  in  assuming  the  red  cap  at  the  behest 
of  the  mob.  "  Why  do  they  not  sweep  away  four  or  five 
hundred  of  them  with  the  cannon  ?  "  Napoleon  was  the 
creation  of  a  democratic  upheaval,  which,  in  his  heart, 
though  he  so  far  accepted  it,  he  certainly  never  loved.  He 
held,  rightly  no  doubt,  that  the  true  national  will  is  by 
no  means  identical  with  the  ever-shifting  demands  of  the 
unruly  populace.  The  latter,  so  far  as  might  be  possible, 
he  always  disregarded ;  the  former  he,  upon  the  whole  (that  is 
as  far  as  suited  his  purpose),  gauged  with  triumphant  success. 
Long  afterwards  he  said  that  in  America  he  would  have  been 
content  with  the  role  of  a  Washington,  for  in  America  the 
national  will  really  held  sway.  In  Europe  there  was  no  other 
way  for  him  than  to  rule  as  a  crowned  Washington  in  the  midst 

1  Of  whom  he  said  later,  "  Rousseau  was  a  bad  man ;  a  very  bad  man ;  he 
caused  the  Revolution." 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     181 

of  kings  conquered  or  mastered.     But  we  anticipate.     Napol- 
eon's conscience  was  often  uneasy  about  the  part  he  played 
in  the  rising  of  the  13th  Vendemiaire,  when  (aged  twenty-six), 
as  general  in  command  of  artillery,  he  "  impressed  his  seal " 
upon  Paris  in  the  form  of  a  whiff  of  grape-shot.     But,  for  all 
that,  the  stamp  was  no  doubt  authentic,  and  the  experience 
probably  went  far  to  remove  any  lingering  illusions  with  regard 
to  the  immediate  future  of  democracy.     "  Once  again,  a  man 
is  needed — what  if  /  should —  ?  "     Immediately  on  this  followed 
the   astounding   revelation   of    Napoleon's   Italian   campaign, 
when  the  young  maestro,  finding  himself  in  control  of  such  an 
orchestra  as  he  had  long  yearned  to  conduct,  gave  the  world 
such  an  overture,  such  a  thunderous  taste  of  his  quality,  as  his 
cosmopolitan  audience  will  assuredly  never  forget.     Beaulieu, 
Wurmser,  Davidowich,  Alvinzi,  Provera — general  after  general 
was  hopelessly  out-manoeuvred ;    army  after  army  was  poured 
into    Italy    from    the    inexhaustible    resources    of    Austria, 
only  to   be   crumpled   and   broken   by  the  hero  of  Lodi,  of 
Roveredo,  of  Primolano,  Arcola,  Rivoli,  and  Mantua.1    This 
upstart  ignores  the  time-honoured  rules  of  the  game ;    fights 
when   he   should   be   in  winter   quarters    or    asleep    leagues 
away ;    never  takes  off  his  boots   for  seven   successive  days 
and    nights ;    makes    tribute    even   of    the   sacred   works    of 
art  in    our    galleries,  hitherto    immune   from   such    outrage ! 
Were  Bonaparte's  thoughts  now  returning  to  the  dreams  of 
those  boyish  days  when  he  pored  over  the  pages  of  the  Dis- 
courses of  Universal  History  ?     Did  he  see   again  the  move- 
ments of  the  gods,  of  Caesar,  Alexander,  Scipio,  Hannibal— 
— and  another  among  them  ?     There  is  reason  to  suspect  it, 
and  that  now  at  least  the  immensity  of  his  opportunity  was 
prompting  the  formulation  of  a  purpose  correspondingly  vast. 
Long  afterwards  he  told  Gourgaud  and  Montholon  that  this 
time,  after  his  Italian  victories,  was  perhaps  the  happiest  in 
his  life.     "  From  that  time  I  saw  what  I  might  become.     I 
already  saw  the  world  flying  beneath  me,  as  if  I  had  been 
carried  through  the  air."    He  could  still  pose  as  a  liberator, 

1  "  Suivant  moi  elle  (la  campagnc  d'ltalio  de  1796  et  1797)  fait  mieux 
connaitre  qu'aucune  autre  et  son  genie  militaire  et  sa  caraotere  "  iStendhal). 


182  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

a  republican,1  but  soon  begins  to  foresee  the  end  of  that.  A 
pear,  still  unripe,  waiting  on  the  bough  to  be  plucked  in  due 
season ;  a  crown  in  the  gutter,  which  the  People  shall  place 
on  his  head  :  in  such  images  his  growing  purpose  embodied 
itself  to  his  mind's  eye.  The  Convention  farce  is  not  quite 
played  out ;  he  is  persona  ingrata  at  present  with  the  little 
tin  gods  of  the  Directory ;  to  divert  himself,  meanwhile,  he 
conceives  grandiose  visions  of  Oriental  empires,  the  conquest  of 
Egypt,  of  Syria,  of  Turkey,  perhaps  one  day  of  India — visions 
which  did  not  come  to  much  in  the  end.  Napoleon  returned 
home — having  crossed  his  moral  Rubicon  at  Jaffa,  when  he 
sanctioned  the  execution  of  his  four  thousand  prisoners — to  find 
the  pear  ripe,  and  to  pluck  it  from  the  bough.  Here,  on  the 
eve  of  his  triumph,  I  will  quote  from  Otto  Weininger  a  sentence 
not  malapropos  :  "  In  Napoleon's  life  also  there  was  a  moment 
when  a  conversion  took  place  ;  but  this  was  not  a  turning 
away  from  earthly  life,  but  the  deliberate  decision  for  the 
treasure  and  power  and  splendour  of  the  earthly  life.  Napoleon 
was  great  in  the  colossal  intensity  with  which  he  flung  from 
him  all  the  ideal,  all  relation  to  the  absolute,  in  the  magnitude  of 
his  guilt."  This,  if  true  at  all,  is  true  in  logic — not  in  psychology : 
there  is  no  evidence  of  any  such  crisis  ;  the  moment  Weininger 
postulates  is  a  moment  not  in  time,  but  in  eternity.  But,  at 
Jaffa,  Napoleon  first  learned  what  hideous  necessities  may  con- 
front the  man  who  has  given  himself  to  Destiny — I  have 
therefore  called  it  his  moral  Rubicon,  and  shall  have  to  speak 
of  it  again.  In  diagnosing  the  purpose  of  Napoleon,  it  is  only 
fair  to  remember  that  his  career  was  cut  short  before  he  could 
bring  it  to  completion.  If  it  be  true  that  idle  men  invariably 
fall  into  mischief,  it  is  no  less  true  that  men  of  extraordinary 
energy  can  hardly  fail  to  effect  something  useful.  There  was 
a  strong  constructive  side  to  the  genius  of  Napoleon,  which 
necessarily  remained  dormant  during  the  greater  part  of  his 
reign,  but  would  no  doubfc  have  produced  great  results  could 
he  have  escaped  the  Nemesis  which  dooms  the  aggressor  to 
a  perpetual  crescendo  of  aggression.  In  the  Code  Napoleon, 

1  "  En  1797  on  pouvait  1'aimer  avec  passion  et  sans  restriction  ;   il  n'avait 
point  vo!6  la  liberte  a  son  pays  "  (Stendhal). 


NAPOLEON. 
From  the  painting  l>y  r<iul  Delaroclit. 


To /act  />.  182 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     183 

however,  he  has  left  an  enduring  testimony  to  its  existence, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  improvement,  rather  the  transformation, 
he  effected  in  Elba  during  the  ten  months  of  his  enforced  resi- 
dence. The  crucial  question  with  regard  to  this  man's  place  in 
history  seems  to  me  to  be  that  of  his  relation  to  the  French  Re- 
volution. Up  to  the  date  of  the  conclusion  of  his  Italian  campaign 
(aet.  28),  his  actions,  at  least,  are  consistent  with  a  loyal  accept- 
ance of  its  fundamental  aims  and  principles.  But  this  was 
all  changed  the  moment  he  saw  a  chance  to  force  himself  to 
the  front,  and,  once  there,  all  considerations  of  Republican 
consistency  were  soon  cast  to  the  winds.  In  the  counsel  dictated 
by  Napoleon  to  Montholon,  for  his  son,  occurs  the  following  : 
"  I  was  obliged  to  daunt  Europe  by  my  arms.  ...  I  saved 
the  Revolution  which  was  about  to  perish.  I  raised  it  from 
its  ruins  and  showed  it  to  the  world  beaming  with  glory.  I  have 
implanted  new  ideas  in  France  and  in  Europe.  They  cannot 
retrograde."  J 

There  is  much  truth  in  this  account  of  his  achieve- 
ment ;  the  point  is  what  he  intended.  Beethoven  was  not  far 
out  when,  on  learning  that  Napoleon  had  accepted  the  title 
of  Emperor,  he  tore  the  title-page  of  his  Eroica  Symphony  and 
trampled  it  underfoot,  exclaiming,  "  After  all,  then,  he  is  only 
an  ordinary  man  !  "  2  By  usurpation,  and  by  his  futile  attempt 
to  found  a  dynasty,  Napoleon  condemned  himself  as  an  ex- 
ploiter of  the  Revolution  ;  and  of  this  treason  many  of  his  own 
sayings  betray  an  uneasy  consciousness.  For  all  that,  Napoleon 
certainly  loved  France,  and  probably  there  is  justice  in  the 
claim  he  makes  in  the  following  assertion  :  "All  that  I  wish, 
all  that  I  desire,  the  object  of  all  my  labours,  is  that  my  name 
shall  for  ever  be  connected  with  the  name  of  France."  In 
other  words,  fame  (as  he  understood  it)  was  the  primary  object 
of  Napoleon's  endeavour.  But  how  did  he  understand  it  ? 
"  A  great  reputation,"  he  said,  "  is  but  a  great  noise  :  the  more 
there  is  of  it  the  farther  off  it  is  heard."  A  grotesquely  mater- 

1  No  thanks  to  Napoleon  if  they  had  not  retrograded.     As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they,  of  course,  could  and  did. 

2  Ordinary,  that  is,  in  motive  and  intention  ;  of  his  exceptional  energy  and 
ability  there  could,  of  course,  be  no  possible  doubt. 


184  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

ialist  conception  of  what  constitutes  fame  :  very  nearly  the 
opposite  of  the  truth.  Fame  is  rather  a  still  small  voice,  hardly 
audible,  even  to  the  sharpest  ear,  during  the  lifetime  of  its 
subject,  growing  louder  and  clearer  when  the  din  of  notoriety 
is  hushed  by  death,  enhanced  through  the  ages  by  the  acclaim 
of  those  who  understand.  "  Securus  judicat  orbis  terrarum." 

If  the  fame  of  Napoleon  has  much  to  fear,  that  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  has  everything  to  hope  from  the  future.    In  dealing 
with  the  problem   of   Vocation,  I   have  already  given  some 
particulars  of  the  growth  of  Lincoln's  purpose,  in  its  primary 
aspect  of  mere  ambition  for  political  power.     I  propose  now 
to  supplement  this  by  a  brief  review  of  the  evidence  as  to 
the  transformation  of  this  crude  personal  aim  into  the  specific 
purpose  of  a  death-grapple  with  slavery.     Some  idea  of  the 
penury   and  hardship   in  which    Lincoln's   early  years  were 
spent  may  be  gained  by  a  story  he  tells  of  an  incident  of  his 
nineteenth  or  twentieth  year.    He  was  "  bow  hand "   on  a 
boat  bound  for  New  Orleans,  and  one  day  received  half  a 
dollar  from  each  of  two  strangers  he  had  rowed  ashore.    His 
amazement  at  the  good  fortune  of  having  earned  a  whole 
dollar  in  less  than  a  day  knew  no  bounds.     "  I  was  a  more 
confident  and  hopeful  being  from  that  time,"   he  declared. 
He  had  already,  by  sheer  force  of  will  and  hard  study,  acquired 
a  wide  fund  of  general  knowledge,  was  a  practised  speaker 
and  a  keen  politician.     Two  or  three  years  later,  in  1831,  on  a 
similar  voyage,  Lincoln  first  saw  negroes  chained  and  whipped. 
The  scene  made  a  deep  and  painful  impression  on  his  naturally 
tender  heart,  and  henceforth  dates  a  growing  conviction  that 
slavery  is  in  essence  wrong.     It  was,  however,  as  yet  merely 
a  pious  opinion,  by  no  means  the  consciousness  of  a  mission. 
In  the  absence  of   a  strong  anti-slavery  movement,  it  is  at 
least  doubtful  whether  Lincoln  would  have  made  any  attempt 
to  promote  one,  for  he  was  a  practical  politician,  by  no  means 
a  pioneer.     His  aim  throughout  life  was  rather  the  utilisation 
of  existing  opinions  than  the  creation  of  new  ones.     In  1834 
(aet.  25),  and  again  in  1836,  Lincoln  was  elected  to  the  Legisla- 
ture of  Illinois.     Between  these  two  events  occurred  in  1835 
the  death    of  a  girl    for  whom   he   had   an   unrequited   love 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     185 

Lincoln  was  for  several  weeks  nearly  insane,  and  the  illness 
brought  his  youth  to  an  abrupt  end.1  In  the  meantime  he 
had,  however,  acquired  a  legal  qualification  and  begun  to 
practise  law ;  and  in  1837  made  his  anti-slavery  debut  by 
presenting  to  the  Legislature  of  Illinois  a  memorial  signed  by 
himself  and  one  other  member,  to  the  effect  that  they  believed 
that  the  institution  of  slavery  was  founded  on  both  injustice 
and  bad  policy ;  but  that  the  promulgation  of  Abolitionist 
doctrines  tended  rather  to  increase  than  abate  its  evils.  Even 
this  mild  protest  involved  some  risk  to  his  popularity  in  a 
State  where  the  pro-slavery  sentiment  was  so  strong  as  in 
Illinois.  Lincoln  was  never  in  the  full  sense  an  Abolitionist, 
and  "  it  was  a  principle  with  him  never  to  advance  beyond 
his  party."  This  characteristic  is  well  illustrated  by  his 
conduct  in  regard  to  religious  belief.  At  New  Salem,  in  his 
early  twenties,  Lincoln  had  studied  Paine's  and  Volney's 
works,  and  was  for  a  time  a  professed  sceptic.  In  1843,  soon 
after  recovery  from  a  second  and  prolonged  attack  of  mental 
alienation,  and  his  marriage  to  Mary  Todd,  Lincoln  was  an 
unsuccessful  candidate  in  the  Whig  interest  for  Congress, 
having  now  turned  his  attention  from  State  politics  to  those 
of  the  Federal  Union.  His  ambitious  marriage  and  supposed 
irreligion  were  convenient  weapons  for  political  detractors, 
and  were  freely  used  against  him.  Lincoln  took  the  lesson 
(so  far  as  his  doctrinal  vagaries  were  concerned)  so  much  to 
heart  that  "  the  most  fervidly  passionate  expressions  of  piety 
began  to  abound  in  his  speeches."  Leland  considers  that 
this  was  not  due  to  hypocrisy,  or  even  to  a  mere  time-serving 
obsequiousness,  but  that,  as  a  staunch  Republican,  Lincoln 
"  faithfully  believed  that  whatever  was  absolutely  popular 
was  founded  on  reason  and  right."  Vox  populi,  vox  Dei, 
a  sentiment  which,  it  is  alleged,  really  counts  for  something 
in  the  United  States.  The  change  of  tone  seems  to  have  had 
good  effect,  for  in  1846  Lincoln  was  elected  to  Congress  in 
the  Whig  interest  by  an  immense  majority.  He  denounced 
the  Mexican  War,  because  the  territory  was  coveted  by  the 

1  In  1840,  Lincoln  had  a  second  such  illness,  lasting  nearly  a  year,  pro- 
voked by  another  love  affair.     He  married  Mary  Todd  in  1842. 


186  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

South  for  the  extension  of  slavery  (and  against  any  extension 
of  the  evil  he  could  not  but  protest),  but  nevertheless  voted 
for  supplies.  In  1850  he  was  invited  to  stand  again,  but 
refused,  and  here,  in  his  forty-first  year,  his  hatred  of  slavery 
is  visibly  hardening  into  a  definite  resolve  to  take  up  the 
cudgels  against  it.  "  It  is  most  probable,"  says  Leland  with 
regard  to  this  temporary  withdrawal  from  the  arena,  "  that  he 
foresaw  the  tremendous  struggle  which  was  approaching 
between  North  and  South,  and  wished  to  prepare  himself  for 
some  great  part  in  it."  Witness  his  own  declaration  :  "  The 
time  will  come  when  we  must  all  be  Democrats  or  Abolitionists. 
When  that  time  comes  my  mind  is  made  up.  The  slavery 
question  can't  be  compromised." 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  if  Lincoln,  holding  definite  anti-slavery 
convictions,  had  now  again  entered  Congress,  he  would  either 
have  had  to  be  false  to  these  or  to  take  up  a  position  in  advance 
of  his  own  party,  thereby  incurring  the  risk  of  losing  his  care- 
fully built-up  popularity  and  much  of  his  power  for  good. 
Neither  alternative  could  be  acceptable  to  a  man  of  his  tempera- 
ment :  he  saw  the  inevitable  drift  of  events,  and  decided  to 
wait  until  his  party  came  up  to  where  he  himself  already  stood. 
Nor  did  he  wait  in  vain.  In  1854  his  rival  in  chief,  Douglas, 
introduced,  and,  after  a  tremendous  struggle,  carried,  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  setting  aside  the  Missouri  Compromise 
of  1820,  by  which  all  territory  North  and  South  of  the  Missouri 
was  to  be  for  ever  free.  The  North  was  furious,  and  Lincoln 
saw  that  his  hour  was  come.  In  October,  Douglas  defended 
the  Bill  at  Springfield  (Illinois),  and  Lincoln,  "  a  new  and 
greater  Lincoln,  the  like  of  whom  no  one  in  that  vast  multitude 
had  ever  heard,"  made  a  crushing  reply.  "  The  Nebraska  Bill 
was  shivered,  and  like  a  tree  of  the  forest  was  torn  and  rent 
asunder  by  hot  bolts  of  truth."  Here,  as  yet,  it  was  the 
extension  of  slavery  rather  than  its  mere  existence  against  which 
Lincoln  specially  warned  the  nation.  "  He  was  willing  to  let 
it  alone  under  the  old  compromise,  though  he  did  not  like  it." 
But  in  1858,  departing  for  once  from  his  usual  policy,  he  took  a 
bold  step  in  advance  of  his  party.  He  had  been  chosen  as 
Republican  candidate  of  Illinois  for  the  Senate,  and,  on  the  next 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     187 

day,  in  the  course  of  a  stirring  speech,  declared  himself  as 
follows  :  "  A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.  I 
believe  this  Government  cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave 
and  half  free.  ...  It  will  become  all  one  thing  or  all  the  other." 
In  the  Senatorial  election  which  followed,  Lincoln  had  really 
a  4000  majority,  but  by  some  legal  quibble  Judge  Douglas  ob- 
tained the  seat.  Lincoln  was  now  famous,  and  began  to  be 
looked  upon  as  a  possible  candidate  for  the  Presidency.  Next 
year  (1859)  he  lectured  in  New  York  and  toured  New  England, 
everywhere  producing,  by  the  studied  moderation  of  his  tone,  a 
most  favourable  effect.  "  For  the  first  half  hour,"  says  a 
contemporary  journal,  "  his  opponents  would  agree  with  every 
word  he  uttered,  and  from  that  point  he  began  to  lead  them  off 
little  by  little,  until  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  got  them  all  into  his 
fold."  The  development  of  Lincoln's  purpose  need  not  be 
followed  beyond  the  year  of  his  election  to  the  Presidency  (1860), 
on  the  platform  of  a  stern  refusal  to  sanction  the  extension  of 
slavery.  It  was  regarded  and  acted  upon  by  the  South  as  a 
declaration  of  civil  war.  In  his  farewell  speech  at  Springfield, 
Lincoln  (now  aged  fifty-one)  showed  a  solemn  sense  of  the  im- 
mensity of  his  burden.  "  No  one  who  has  never  been  placed 
in  a  like  position  can  understand  my  feelings  at  this  hour,  nor 
the  oppressive  sadness  I  feel  at  this  parting.  ...  I  go  to 
assume  a  task  more  difficult  than  that  which  devolved  upon 
Washington.  Unless  the  great  God  who  assisted  him  shall  be 
with  me,  I  must  fail." 

II.  ^Esthetic  Type. — Under  the  heading  of  Natural  Voca- 
tion I  have  already  shown  how,  from  a  very  early  age,  Dante 
displayed  a  strong  tendency  towards  literature  and  art,  and 
achieved  an  honourable  recognition  among  the  poets  of  his  day. 
It  was  further  shown  how  in  early  manhood  he  turned  for  a  time 
to  the  field  of  municipal  politics,  and  seemed  likely  to  make 
these  the  central  interest  of  his  career.  Then  came  the  dis- 
illusioning shock  of  exile  ;  he  had  left  his  dearly  loved  and  hated 
Florence  for  ever,  to  wander  for  years  from  place  to  place, 
embittered  if  not  humbled,  nursing  the  sense  of  injuries  and  the 
apparently  hopeless  craving  for  an  adequate  revenge.  In  the 
Vita  Nuova,  written  between  his  twenty-seventh  and  thirtieth 


188  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

years,  but  embodying  many  sonnets  and  poems  of  earlier  date, 
Dante  had  already  declared  his  intention  of  glorifying  the  memory 
of  Beatrice  above  that  of  all  other  women.  Soon  after  this,  by 
enrolling  himself  in  the  guild  of  apothecaries,  Dante  took  his 
first  step  in  pursuit  of  political  power,  and  his  ideal  projects 
were  for  a  time  in  abeyance.  In  his  thirty-third  year  at  latest 
occurred  his  marriage  to  Gemma  of  the  Donati,  which  was 
no  doubt  a  further  distraction.  But  "in  his  thirty-fifth  year 
(1300)  he  began  to  devote  himself  to  carrying  into  effect  that 
upon  which  he  had  been  meditating,  namely,  to  rebuke  and  to 
glorify  the  lives  of  men  according  to  their  different  deserts. 
And  inasmuch  as  he  perceived  that  the  lives  of  men  were  of 
three  kinds — namely,  the  vicious  life,  the  life  abandoning  vices 
and  making  for  virtue,  and  the  virtuous  life — he  divided  his 
work  in  wondrous  wise  into  three  books  in  one  volume,  beginning 
with  the  punishment  of  vice  and  ending  with  the  reward  of 
virtue." 

Such  was,  presumably,  the  plan  from  its  first  conception,  but 
at  the  time  when  Dante  in  1302  was  condemned  during  this 
absence  from  Florence — which  he  never  again  entered — the 
seven  cantos  of  the  "  Inferno  "  which  he  had  already  written,  left 
behind  in  the  city,  were  forgotten  in  the  stress  of  that  disastrous 
period,  and  the  whole  project  dismissed  from  his  mind.  Five 
years  later,  Boccaccio  says,  these  cantos  were  accidentally 
found  among  other  papers  in  a  chest  by  a  nephew  of  Dante, 
who  showed  them  to  a  critic,  Dino  Frescobaldi.  This  critic, 
"  marvellously  pleased  "  by  the  composition,  forwarded  it  to 
the  Marquis  Moroello  Malaspina  in  the  Lunigiana,  with  whom 
Dante  was  then  living,  begging  him  "  to  exert  his  good  offices 
to  induce  Dante  to  continue  and  finish  his  work." 

So  urged  to  resume  his  work,  Dante  replied  that  he  had 
indeed  given  up  all  thoughts  of  it.  "  But  since  it  has  pleased 
God  that  they  should  not  be  lost,  I  shall  endeavour,  as  far  as  I 
am  able,  to  proceed  with  them  according  to  my  first  design." 
This  anecdote  is  confirmed  by  the  opening  phrase  of  the  eighth 
canto  of  the  "  Inferno,"  "  lo  dico  seguitando."  It  is,  however, 
probable  that  the  preceding  cantos,  if  they  had  indeed  been 
written  before  the  beginning  of  his  exile,  were  in  great  part 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     189 

re-written  when,  somewhere  about  1307  (aged  forty-two),  the 
central  task  of  his  life  was  resumed  by  the  poet.  One  can 
easily  imagine  how  opportune  the  suggestion  might  seem — how 
apt  its  appeal  to  the  developed  nature  and  special  circumstances 
of  the  man.  Censorious  by  nature,  he  saw  and  welcomed  an 
opportunity  to  sit  in  judgment  upon  his  age  ;  to  speak  his  whole 
mind  with  regard  to  its  crimes  and  follies,  their  authors  and 
abettors ;  to  dole  out  approval  and  to  lavish  condemnation. 
Not  that  I  mean  to  imply  that  Dante's  many  harsh  verdicts 
were  solely  or  even  predominantly  determined  by  personal 
resentments,  by  mere  spite  ;  any  more  than  I  should  care  to 
exonerate  him  from  all  suspicion  of  such  motives.  He  was  a 
man  of  many  hates  and  more  scorns,  of  few  admirations  and 
fewer  loves.  Immensely  superior  in  all  essentials  to  the  bulk 
of  his  contemporaries,  he  was  and  knew  himself  to  be.  The 
age  that  had  used  him  so  vilely  needed  to  hear  the  hard  truth 
about  itself,  and  its  chosen  idols.  All  ages  use  their  great 
spirits  vilely  ;  hence  all  ages  need  the  stern  warning  of  inevitable 
defeat  which  Dante's  fierce  yet  measured  retaliation  for  once  in  a 
way  supplies.  Much  pious  horror  has  been  expended  on  the 
detailed  barbarity  of  the  punishments  described  in  the  ';  Inferno," 
but  those  who  make  these  complaints  can  have  little  understand- 
ing and  less  imagination.  Dante  lived  in  an  age  when  cruelty 
was  a  commonplace  of  existence,  the  age  which  produced  the 
monstrous  Ezzelino,  and  being,  like  all  great  poets,  a  realist, 
he  inevitably  derived  his  incident  and  imagery  from  the  features 
of  his  environment.  Those  who  look  below  the  surface  can  see 
plainly  that  the  tortures  of  his  damned  souls  are  not  arbitrary 
inventions  or  vindictive  retaliations,  but  the  imaginative  pre- 
sentation of  vice  in  its  essential  monstrosity  and  self-destroying 
malignity.  They  are,  as  has  been  well  said,  "  but  the  sins 
themselves,  revealed  in  their  essence,  recognised  by  their  results  : 
the  poet  shows  how  the  souls  of  his  condemned  have  made 
their  choice  in  this  life,  and  how  they  work  out  their  own 
damnation."  So  it  is  that  Alberigo,  the  murderous  friar,  and 
Bianca  Doria,  can  be  found  in  the  ice-bound  pit  of  Cocytus, 
while  yet  both  seem 

"  In  body  still  alive  upon  the  earth." 


igo  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Literally  taken,  says  Dante,  the  poem  treats  of  the  state  of 
souls  after  death — a  clear  hint  that  it  has  a  deeper  esoteric 
meaning.  Nay,  he  explains  further  to  Can  Grande,  that, 
"  considered  according  to  its  allegorical  meaning,  the  subject  is 
Man,  liable  to  the  reward  or  punishment  of  justice,  according  as 
through  the  freedom  of  his  will  he  is  deserving  or  undeserving. 
The  aim  of  the  work  is  to  remove  those  living  in  this  life  from  a 
state  of  misery,  and  to  guide  them  to  a  state  of  happiness." 
That  state  of  happiness,  as  described  in  the  "  Paradiso,"  is, 
taken  au  pied  de  la  lettre,  just  as  little  satisfactory  to  our  modern 
ideas  as  the  misery  of  the  "  Inferno."  Dante's  is  a  very  theo- 
logical and  severely  scholastic  heaven.  Interminable  discussions 
of  the  fine  points  of  doctrinal  casuistry,  varied  by  intricate 
manoeuvres  and  celestial  pyrotechnics,  do  not  make  a  too-alluring 
programme  of  eternal  bliss.  What  really  interests  us  throughout 
is  the  gradual  unfolding  of  Dante's  theory  of  values,  his  national 
and  ecclesiastical  ideals,  his  unsparing  polemic  against  papal 
arrogance  and  corruption.  As  Mr.  Owen  has  well  remarked, 
"  A  reformed  Romanism  such  as  he  (Dante)  would  have  ap- 
proved, would  not  have  varied  greatly  from  some  types  of 
Protestantism,"  1  He  saw  Italy  converted  by  papal  intrigue 
into  the  cockpit  of  irreconcilable  factions  ;  his  own  ruin  had 
been  one  of  the  direct  results  of  the  foreign  intervention  invited 
by  the  almost  insanely  ambitious  Pope  Boniface.  The  con- 
version by  unscrupulous  priest-craft  of  a  purely  spiritual  author- 
ity to  base  material  ends,  was  for  him,  as  it  was  two  centuries 
later  for  Luther,  the  source  of  nearly  all  the  evils  that  afiected 
the  body-politic  of  the  Empire.  His  remedy  was  the  firm 
resumption  by  the  Emperor  of  the  secular  power  pertaining  to 
his  high  office,  the  strict  limitation  of  the  Curia  to  the  ecclesias- 
tical domain.  His  grievance  against  Florence  was  not  merely 
personal :  he  regarded  her  as  the  hotbed  of  pro-papal  intrigue, 
the  prime  fomenter  of  treason  against  the  Lord's  Anointed. 
Hence  the  terrible  epistle  "  to  the  most  wicked  Florentines 
within,"  in  which  he  denounced  her  "  who  transgresses  every 
law  of  God  and  man,  and  whom  the  insatiable  maw  of  avarice 
urges  into  every  crime."  Hence  the  eager  appeal  to  the 

1  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  p.  104. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     191 

Emperor  Henry  vn.,  when  in  1311  he  was  besieging  Cremona, 
to  "  leave  all  else  and  come  and  crush  the  viper  Florence,  the 
most  dangerous  and  obstinate  rebel  against  his  authority." 
The  death  of  Henry  in  1313  was  fatal  to  Dante's  hopes,  personal 
and  political :  he  knew  now  that  he  would  see  Florence  no  more. 
Yet,  everywhere,  can  he  not  gaze  upon  the  sun  and  the  stars  ? 
can  he  not  under  any  sky  meditate  on  the  most  precious  truths  ? 
.  .  .  Bread  will  not  fail  him.  Brave  words,  concealing  the 
rancour  of  an  unhealed  wound !  Somewhere  about  this  time, 
if  tradition  be  credited,  he  may  have  retired,  seeking  peace,  to 
the  Convent  in  the  Apennines,  "  from  which  he  gazed  forth  upon 
the  perishing  world  of  the  Middle  Ages,  which  was  finding  im- 
perishable monument  in  his  work."  To  the  same  epoch,  Mr. 
Gardner  thinks,  belongs  "  the  moral  conversion  which,  by  his 
poetical  fiction,  he  represents  as  taking  place  in  the  year  of  the 
jubilee,  1300."  By  the  failure  of  all  his  material  hopes  and 
aims  his  purpose  has  been  purged  and  strengthened ;  his 
utterance  has  acquired  the  aloofness  and  universality  of  one 
who  speaks,  without  fear  or  favour,  what  heart  and  genius 
reveal.  By  the  enchantment  of  his  art,  combining  in  un- 
matched perfection,  music,  style,  symmetry,  and  a  sustained 
exaltation  of  spirit,  he  has  made  of  a  purely  topical  theme 
(one  which  in  less  capable  hands  might  well  have  proved 
ephemeral,  even  revolting)  a  human  document  of  inexhaustible 
significance,  a  poem  of  divine  beauty,  and,  without  prejudice 
to  its  artistic  rank,  a  passionate  rebuke  of  base  aims  and  in- 
citement of  high  endeavour. 

With  regard  to  Leonardo  I  have  not  much  to  add  here  to 
what  has  been  said  in  a  former  chapter.  The  key  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  man  and  his  purpose  (if  he  really  had  one)  is 
undoubtedly  to  be  found  in  his  ruling  motive — intellectual 
curiosity.  This  was,  in  the  first  place,  no  doubt  employed 
as  a  means  to  the  perfection  of  his  art,  which  he  desired  to 
methodise  and  intellectualise  to  a  degree  which  no  other 
painter  ever  attempted.  Mere  decoration  he  despised — every 
detail  of  his  work  should  be  pregnant  with  dramatic  signifi- 
cance ;  every  gesture  symbolic  of  some  phase  of  the  human 
spirit.  Thus  in  his  great  picture  of  the  "  Last  Supper  "  (com- 


I92  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

pleted  set.  46),  the  problem  worked  out  with  consummate 
patience  and  skill  is  the  effect  of  the  utterance,  "  One  of  you 
shall  betray  me,"  on  a  group  of  men  of  various  ages  and  tempera- 
ments. The  twelve  apostles  fall  into  groups  of  three,  an 
original  and  new  device.  Judas,  however,  leans  sideways  out 
of  the  group  to  which  he  belongs,  his  arm  resting  on  the  table, 
his  glance  fixed  solely  on  Christ.  He  is  painted  as  an  extra- 
ordinary force — the  evil  principle  incarnate.  Jesus  alone  is 
isolated,  but  dramatic  unity  is  preserved  by  the  fact  that  the 
looks  and  gestures  of  all  centre  on  him.  The  other  groups  are 
all  naturally  and  unobtrusively  combined.  The  head  of  Christ 
is  emphasised  by  a  background  of  pale  landscape  and  clear  sky, 
whose  luminosity  surrounds  it,  as  it  were,  with  a  halo  of  softly 
radiant  light.1  This  one  example  of  Leonardo's  method 
suffices  to  justify  his  own  dictum,  that  "  by  far  the  most  im- 
portant point  in  the  whole  theory  of  painting  is  to  make  the 
actions  express  the  psychical  state  of  each  character."  But  so 
it  was  with  all  his  pictures  :  he  approached  them  in  the  spirit 
of  a  mathematician  who  has  a  problem  to  solve.  Sometimes 
he  solved  it  to  his  own  satisfaction ;  sometimes,  in  a  sort  of 
despair,  he  left  the  work  unfinished  and  passed  on  to  other 
activities.  In  the  end  he  largely  wearied  of  the  too  limited 
interest  of  art-work,  and  plunged  deeply  into  scientific  and 
philosophical  speculations.  His  random  thoughts  he  jotted 
down  in  his  note-books,  but,  having  outgrown  what  little 
ambition  he  had  ever  felt,  cared  not  to  give  them  the  finality 
of  systematic  expression.  Truth  to  tell,  I  think  he  had  a 
mean  opinion  of  his  fellow  -  men,  and  therefore,  not  greatly 
valuing  their  applause,  lacked  the  compelling  motive  to  any 
complete  and  rounded  achievement.  The  very  vastness  of  his 
powers  and  immensity  of  his  interests  were  in  some  sense  a 
hindrance  to  him,  for,  as  Rochefoucauld  keenly  observes,  "  ce 
n'est  assez  d'avoir  de  grandes  qualites  ;  il  en  faut  avoir  1'econ- 
omie."  Too  proud  or  too  self-centred  for  such  economy,  his 
genius  proved  less  fertile  than  that  of  many  lesser  men ;  and 
he  gradually  deteriorated  into  a  sort  of  sublime  dilettante, 

1  For  the  above  criticism  I  am  indebted  to  the  biography  of  Dr.  Georg 
Gronau. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      193 

through  lack  of  that  firm  self-limitation  which  only  a  deliberately 
adopted  purpose  could  have  enforced. 

Yet  it  must  after  all  be  an  enhancement  of  the  great  name 
of  Leonardo,  that  his  nature  was  essentially  above  ambition ; 
his  ideals,  aesthetic  and  speculative,  too  lofty  to  be  exploited 
in  the  interest  of  material  advancement.  The  glorious  genius 
of  Titian,  on  the  other  hand,  was,  in  the  hands  of  that  master, 
but  a  means  to  the  securing  of  wealth,  luxury,  and  prestige  ; 
and  the  second-rate  motives  of  his  art-life  are  clearly  traceable 
in  the  sequence  of  his  works.  He  failed  to  realise  or  to  reverence 
the  immense  responsibility  of  his  unique  endowment ;  sold  the 
best  part  of  his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage  ;  preferred  the 
compliments  of  an  Emperor  or  the  flagrant  wit  of  an  Aretino  to 
the  austere  promptings  of  a  divinity,  which  nevertheless  re- 
peatedly asserted  its  power.  Supreme  as  a  painter  he  could  not 
but  be  ;  as  an  artist  he  fell  short  of  his  revealed  potentialities, 
and  sometimes  failed  even  grotesquely ;  as  a  personality  he 
was,  upon  the  whole,  mediocre.  Not,  be  it  well  observed, 
through  the  lack  of  a  "  message,"  a  conscious  didactic  aim,  or  a 
philosophy — with  any  or  all  of  which  we  can  cheerfully  dispense 
in  an  artist.  Merely  because  his  purpose  was  extraneous  to 
his  art,  whereas  they  should  have  been  one  and  indivisible  ; 
because  his  art  was  in  some  degree  the  bond-servant,  the  tool, 
of  his  ambition.  An  indefatigable  bond -servant,  a  most 
effective  tool  without  doubt ;  but — what  functions  to  impose 
upon  a  divinity  !  Not  that  the  world  has  much  right  to  cavil, 
which,  if  Titian  had  always  maintained  his  art  at  his  highest 
level,  would  no  doubt  have  awarded  him  more  kicks  or,  at  any 
rate,  fewer  halfpence.  The  keenness  of  Titian  in  regard  to 
pecuniary  interest  is  well  shown  by  his  insistence  in  application 
for  the  reversion  of  the  broker's  patent  held  by  Bellini  at  Venice 
under  the  merchants  of  the  Fontaco  de'  Tedeschi.  When, 
in  due  course,  he  succeeded  to  the  office,  he  showed  himself 
"  much  more  anxious  to  receive  the  not  inconsiderable  emolu- 
ments than  to  finish  the  pictures,  the  painting  of  which  was  the 
one  essential  duty."  When  Alfonso's  agent  offered  sixty  ducats 
for  the  "  St.  Sebastian  "  he  had  painted  specially  for  the  Papal 
Legate,  Titian  was  quite  ready  to  accept  the  higher  offer  and 
13 


I94  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

go  back  on  his  commission.  His  innate  cupidity  was  further 
strengthened  by  his  intimacy  with  the  brilliant  but  infamous 
Aretino,  under  whose  influence  Titian  became  "  at  once  more 
humble  and  more  pressing."  Nor  can  it  be  a  mere  coincidence 
that,  side  by  side  with  "  the  growing  worldliness  and  avarice  of 
the  man,  we  find  a  steady  deterioration  of  his  concept  of  woman- 
hood, and  in  his  religious  art  an  alternation  of  decorative 
superfluity  with  a  sort  of  superstitious  intensity  and  almost 
frenzied  fervour.  Right  up  to  his  ninetieth  year,  his  power  as 
a  wielder  of  the  brush  grew  steadily  in  breadth  and  assurance  : 
the  more  striking,  therefore,  is  his  always  wavering  and  ever 
diminishing  grasp  of  the  ideal.  It  is  a  far  cry  from  the 
Giorgionesque  refinement  of  the  "  Three  Ages  "  and  the  "  Temp- 
tation of  Medea  " 1  to  the  quasi-vulgarity  of  the  "  Rape  of 
Europa " ;  from  the  grave  majesty  of  the  "  Cristo  della 
Moneta,"  the  divine  serenity  of  the  "  Assunta,"  to  the  tragic 
awe,  rather  the  remorseful  terror,  of  the  "  Trinity  "  and  the 
"  Pieta." 

I  have  already  shown,  with  reference  to  Cervantes,  how 
his  early  attraction  to  a  military  career  was  rudely  rebuffed 
by  fortune.  After  six  years'  distinguished  service,  he  had 
nothing  to  show  but  a  crippled  hand  and  some  letters  of  recom- 
mendation from  Don  Carlos  and  Don  John,  which,  being  found 
upon  him  on  his  capture  by  Algerine  corsairs,  led  to  his  being 
regarded  as  a  rare  prize  and  being  treated  with  exceptional 
harshness  with  a  view  to  the  extortion  of  a  higher  ransom. 
His  five  years'  slavery  culminating  in  the  attempt  of  the 
Dominican,  Blanco  de  Paz,  to  ruin  his  reputation,  completed 
the  process  of  his  disillusionment.  "  Algiers,  which  spoilt  his 
life  and  ended  his  dream  of  romance,  roused  in  him  that  finer 
humanity  of  which  Don  Quixote  was  the  outcome."  Among 
other  things,  he  had  learned  that  Christians  had  no  monopoly 
of  virtue,  and  henceforth  showed  "  a  degree  of  tolerance  and 
charity  for  Mohammedans  which  was  certainly  unusual  in 
that  age,  and  unique  in  a  Spanish  great  writer." 

Cervantes  was  thirty-three  years  of  age  on  his  return  from 
Algiers,  but  nearly  twenty  years  had  yet  to  pass  before  he  reaped 
1  Commonly  but  erroneously  entitled  "  Sacred  and  Profane  Love," 


To/ace  /.  194. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      195 

the  full  harvest  of  enlightenment  and  garnered  it  in  the  pages 
of  his  masterwork.  But  in  one  at  least  of  the  twenty  or  thirty 
plays  (mostly  pot-boilers)  which  he  wrote  between  the  ages  of 
thirty-eight  and  forty-one — the  sublime  tragedy  of  Numancia 
— he  plainly  revealed  the  immense  power  and  audacity  of  his 
imagination.  "  In  grandeur  of  conception,  in  the  sublimity  of 
its  pathos,  in  intensity  of  patriotic  feeling  and  concentrated 
heroic  energy,"  says  Mr.  Watts,  "  it  would  be  difficult  to  find 
a  parallel  for  the  Numancia  in  the  whole  range  of  tragedy." 
This  of  a  play  written  in  an  age  when  the  most  banal  artificiality 
was  the  prevailing,  the  almost  universal,  note  of  Spanish  litera- 
ture, is  not  without  significance.  But  the  dregs  of  his  cup  of 
salutary  humiliation  were  as  yet  undrunk.  From  his  fifty- 
second  to  his  fifty-sixth  year  he  was,  by  force  of  strong  necessity, 
employed  in  the  uncongenial  task  of  collecting  dues  for  a  military 
order  in  La  Mancha.  The  Manchegans  are  among  the  rudest 
and  least  cultivated  races  of  Spain ;  and  a  collector  is  hardly 
in  a  position  to  become  popular,  even  among  the  most  amiable 
folk.  Cervantes  managed  to  offend  the  people  of  Argamasilla, 
and  Rodrigo  de  Pacheco,  a  leading  inhabitant,  seized  him  and 
confined  him  "  for  long  days  and  troubled  nights  "  in  a  half- 
underground  cellar  of  the  House  of  Medrano.  Here,  at  or  about 
the  age  of  fifty-four,  under  these  tragi-comic  circumstances,  it 
seems  that  the  inspiration  came  to  Cervantes  which  resulted 
in  the  production  of  Don  Quixote.  In  the  church  of  Argamasilla 
there  is  a  picture  of  the  hidalgo,  Rodrigo  de  Pacheco,  praying 
with  his  niece,  a  picture  painted  in  commemoration  of  his 
recovery  from  insanity.  The  features  are  not  unlike  those 
assigned  to  Don  Quixote.  It  seems  as  though  Cervantes,  in  a 
mood  as  near  bitterness  as  was  possible  to  such  a  nature,  in  a 
despair  born  of  unmerited  humiliation  and  complete  disillusion- 
ment, had  chosen  the  perpetrator  of  this  outrage  as  the  symbol 
of  the  false  idealism  which  he  had  so  much  reason  to  detest. 
If,  in  the  execution  of  the  work,  his  genius  compelled  him  to  do 
full  justice  to  the  nobler  side  of  the  chivalric  ideal,  that  is  only 
what  might  have  been  expected  from  a  writer  incapable  of  real 
malice  or  long-cherished  resentment.  The  first  part,  written 
spontaneously  and  without  any  fixed  plan,  was  completed  in  a 


196  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

couple  of  years,  and  published  in  a  very  imperfectly-corrected 
form  in  his  fifty-eighth  year  (1605).  It  was  the  deathblow  to 
pseudo-romance — from  that  year  no  new  book  of  chivalry  was 
written,  nor  one  old  one  reprinted.  The  second  part  promised 
by  the  author,  which,  by  the  way,  was  forestalled  by  an  obscure 
pseudonymous  travesty  gravely  suspected  to  be  the  work  of 
his  dramatic  rival,  Lope  de  Vega,  appeared  in  1615.  In  this 
part  the  Don  has  grown  "  into  a  larger  and  purer  nature,  .  .  . 
is  less  the  man  out  of  his  wits  and  more  the  man  of  understand- 
ing. .  .  .  The  parody  of  the  old  romance  is,  to  a  large  extent, 
dropped."  It  is,  indeed,  as  Mr.  Watts  observes,  a  marvel  "  that 
this  book  with  its  frolic,  grace,  its  abundant  wealth  of  humour 
and  perpetual  flow  of  life  and  invention,  ...  so  brimful  of  love 
and  hope,  should  be  the  work  of  a  man  approaching  the  seventieth 
year  of  a  life  of  trouble,  of  toil,  of  privation,  and  of  disappointment 
such  as  few  men,  and  among  them  no  great  writer,  ever  lived." 
The  purpose  of  Cervantes  has  proved  somewhat  vague 
and  elusive  ;  to  seek  that  of  Mozart  is  like  seeking  for  the  pot 
of  gold  fabled  to  be  buried  at  the  foot  of  the  rainbow.  The 
flawless  unity  of  his  genius  not  merely  baffles  but  defies  analysis  : 
Mozart  was  essentially  an  improvisator,  a  musician  by  instinct. 
And  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  he  died  at  the  close  of  his 
thirty-fifth  year.  And  so  the  Mozart  known  to  the  world  is 
mainly  a  Mozart  great  by  endowment  rather  than  by  volition, 
one  who  lived  in  a  dreamland  of  sensuous  rapture,  insensible  to 
the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune.  "  The  good  old 
time  is  past,"  says  Nietzsche,  "  it  sang  itself  out  in  Mozart — 
how  happy  are  we  that  his  rococo  still  speaks  to  us,  that  his  'good 
company,'  his  tender  enthusiasm,  his  childish  delight  in  the 
Chinese  and  in  flourishes,  his  courtesy  of  heart,  his  longing  for 
the  elegant,  the  amorous,  the  tripping,  the  tearful,  and  his 
belief  in  the  South,  can  still  appeal  to  something  left  in  us. 
.  .  .  Mozart  the  last  echo  of  a  great  European  taste  which  had 
existed  for  centuries."  Yet  there  was  another  and  greater 
Mozart,  a  Mozart  who  cried  in  anguish  to  God  for  the  peace  and 
security  denied  by  Fate,  in  which  to  do  justice  to  his  genius  ; 
who  awakened  at  last  from  his  easy  optimism  to  find  his  wife 
a  mere  valetudinarian  wreck,  five  of  his  six  children  dead,  his 


CKRVANTKS. 


f/.    1 06. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      197 

financial  condition  hopeless,  and  his  very  life  ebbing  away.  So 
awakened,  by  a  supreme  effort  of  will  he  turned  his  back  on  all 
that,  dedicating  the  dregs  of  his  vitality  to  Art  and  Art  only. 
This  Mozart  of  the  last  phase,  who  had  barely  a  year  to  live, 
was  the  purposeful  Mozart,  the  freemason  who  in  Die  Zauber- 
flote  shows  a  clear  prevision  of  the  Drama  of  Reason  versus 
Authority — the  saint  who  in  the  Requiem  Mass  bade  a  sublime 
heartbroken  yet  unrebellious  farewell  to  life  and  its  infinite 

possibilities.    //  Mozart  had  lived / 

"  To  speak  it  in  a  word,  the  cultivation  of  my  individual 
self,  here  as  I  am,  has,  from  my  youth  upwards,  been  constantly, 
though  dimly,  my  wish  and  purpose."  This  frank  declaration 
is,  I  believe,  the  true  key  to  an  understanding  of  the  complex 
personality  of  Goethe.  The  words  "  constantly,  though  dimly," 
are,  however,  of  special  significance  ;  up  to  three  years  after 
the  time  of  his  entering  the  service  of  the  Duke  at  Weimar — up 
to  his  thirtieth  year — Goethe's  various  activities  and  interests 
had  been  largely  dictated  and  controlled  by  impulse,  although 
the  instinct  for  self-discipline  and  unity  was  no  doubt  in  latent 
existence.  One  of  the  really  important  landmarks  in  the  early 
life  of  Goethe  was  the  gift  of  a  puppet-show  "  setting  forth 
the  story  of  David  and  Goliath,"  which  he  received  from  his 
grandmother  at  the  age  of  five.  "  On  the  boy,"  he  tells  us, 
"  it  made  a  very  strong  impression,  which  echoed  into  a  great 
long-enduring  influence."  The  seed  had  fallen  on  fertile  ground, 
and  germinated  accordingly ;  it  is  by  the  observation  of  such 
trifling  indications  that  watchful  parents  can  discover  the 
fundamental  proclivities  of  their  children.  This  dramatic 
bias  was  fortified  by  the  influence  of  Thorane,  a  French  officer 
of  aesthetic  tastes,  who  was  quartered  upon  the  Goethe  family 
during  the  poet's  tenth  year.  Many  French  plays  were  being 
acted  in  Frankfurt ;  Goethe  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  lad 
belonging  to  the  Company  ;  frequented  the  green  room  ;  saw 
many  things  there  which  it  would  have  been  better  for  his 
morals  if  he  had  not  seen,  and  inevitably  tried  his  hand  at 
writing  a  play.  Like  most  "  spoilt  boys,"  Goethe  soon  got  into 
bad  company,  and  the  Gretchen  imbroglio,  an  episode  of  his 
teens,  was  the  natural  result  of  the  premature  stimulation  of 


ig8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

his  senses.    At  Leipsic  University  (set.  16  to  19),  though  he  was 
nominally  studying  law,  and  though  he  made  some  desultory 
experiments  in  drama,  most  of  Goethe's  time  was  devoted  to 
philandering,  if  not  to  actual  dissipation.     A  long  and  severe 
illness  followed,  but  in  his  twenty-first  year,  having  entered 
Strasburg  University,  one  of  the  great  intellectual  impulses  of 
his  life  came  to  him  from  the  reading  of  Shakespeare.     "  The 
first  page  of  his  I  read,"  he  declares,  "  made  me  his  for  life ; 
and  when  I  had  finished  a  single  play  I  stood  like  one  born 
blind,  on  whom  a  miraculous  hand  bestows  sight  in  a  moment. 
I  saw,  I  felt  in  the  most  vivid  manner,  that  my  existence  was 
infinitely  expanded.  ...  I  did  not  hesitate  a  moment  about 
renouncing  the  classical  drama.     The  unity  of  place  seemed  to 
me  irksome  as  a  prison,  the  unities  of  action  and  of  time  burden- 
some fetters   on   our  imagination."     While   in  this  mood    of 
spiritual  emancipation  and  enlargement,  Goethe  lighted  on  the 
autobiography  of  the  iron-handed  knight  who  played  so  great 
a  part  in  the  Peasants'  War  of  the  Sixteenth  Century.    In  Goetz 
von  Berlichingen,  "  who  had  not  allowed  his  spirit  to  be  broken 
by  the  tyrannical  forces  of  his  period,  but  had  asserted  his 
individuality  and  had  been  loyal  to  his  loftiest  aims,"  he  found 
"  a  medium  for  the  expression  of  his  own  aspirations."     The 
result  was  a  play  written  off-hand  in  six  weeks  in  the  winter  of 
1771  (set.  22),  which  "revolutionised  the  German  drama,"  and 
may  plausibly  claim  to  have  originated  the  historical  romance  of 
Scott,  its  translator.    The  influence  of  Shakespeare  is  clearly 
seen  in  the  irregularity,  spirit,  and  variety  of  the  play,  but  Mr. 
Hayward   considers   that   Goethe   has   assimilated   the   melo- 
dramatic rather  than  the  truly  dramatic  element  of  the  historical 
pieces.     There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  Goethe's  dramatic 
bias  was  quickened,  the  formulation  of  definite  self-conscious 
aims  promoted,  and  his  conception  of  art  permanently  modified, 
by  the  study  of  Shakespeare.     The  incubation,  perhaps  even 
the  conception,  of  at  least  the  first  part  of  Faust,  belongs  to 
the  same  period  ;   the  actual  writing  of  it  began  in  his  twenty- 
fourth  or  twenty -fifth  year,  while  the  completion  of  the  entire 
poem  occupied  him  at  intervals  for  nearly  sixty  years  more, 
until  the  very  eve  of  his  own  dissolution.     Goethe's  tempera- 


MOZART. 


To  face  p.  198. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      199 

ment,  of  course,  included — as  part  of  his  maternal  inheritance — a 
large  proportion  of  German  sentimentality,  counterbalanced, 
fortunately,  by  the  solid  bourgeois  characteristics  which  in- 
creasingly prevailed.  Moreover,  he  lived  in  a  sentimental  age, 
an  age  of  outworn  ideals  and  somewhat  florid  romance.  The 
reading  of  Hamlet  intensified,  for  Goethe  and  his  friends,  the 
symptoms  of  their  malady ;  to  be  world-weary  and  intro- 
spective was  decidedly  a  la  mode.  Goethe  trifled  with  the  idea 
of  suicide,  took  a  dagger  to  bed  with  him,  and,  like  the  harper 
in  Wilhelm  Meister,  "  pressed  himself  back  to  life  by  a  contiguity 
with  death."  Much  of  this  virus  of  morbidity,  however,  he 
excreted  by  writing  The  Sorrows  of  Werther  (1772,  set.  23),  a  tale 
built  up  round  the  semi-idiotic  suicide  of  an  acquaintance,  who 
had  fancied  himself  blighted  by  a  hopeless  love.  After  the 
completion  of  this  work,  the  instant  and  sensational  success  of 
which  no  doubt  greatly  strengthened  his  confidence  in  his 
literary  vocation,  Goethe  "  felt,  as  after  a  general  confession, 
once  more  buoyant  and  free."  Another  great  factor  in  his 
progress  towards  a  conscious  ideal  of  self-discipline  and  self- 
culture  was  the  reading  of  Spinoza's  Ethics,  with  which  he 
became  first  acquainted  about  this  time.  He  found  in  this 
book  a  message  of  hope,  cheerfulness,  and  courage,  without 
illusions ;  its  intellectual  content  strongly  influenced  his  future 
work  in  poetry,  drama,  and  fiction.  "For  many  years  he 
returned  to  it  again  and  again."  He  was  on  the  right  track  at 
last,  yet  up  to  the  time  of  his  leaving  Frankfurt  (set.  26)  had  not, 
Mr.  Sime  thinks,  by  any  means  become  reconciled  to  himself 
or  the  world.  The  Lili  episode  had  intervened,  ending,  of  course, 
in  further  disillusionment,  not  to  say  humiliation.  But  in  his 
thirtieth  year,  when  he  had  been  about  three  years  in  the  service 
of  the  Duke,  at  Weimar,  a  profound  change,  due  not  only  to  all 
the  influences  we  have  traced  above,  but  also,  in  part,  probably, 
to  the  healthy  effect  of  useful  prosaic  employment,  passed  over 
the  character  of  Goethe.  He  made  a  strong  effort  to  acquire 
firm  control  over  mind  and  body,  to  renounce  "  time -destroying 
sentiment  and  shadow -passions,"  and  to  work  steadily  for  well- 
developed  aims.  The  crude  romanticism  of  contemporary 
literature  became  repugnant  to  him  (e.g.  he  loathed  Schiller's 


200  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Robbers l) ;  his  manner  acquired  calmness  and  reserve,  not 
without  hauteur,  perhaps,  for  after  all  he  was  the  intimate  of  a 
reigning  Duke  !  "I  will  yet  be  master,"  he  writes  (aet.  31). 
"  No  one  save  he  who  wholly  renounces  self  is  worthy  to  rule  or 
can  rule."  Goethe  deceives  himself  here  ;  he,  at  any  rate,  never 
renounced  self,  or  seriously  desired  to  do  so.  His  real  permanent 
aim  was  the  purely  self-centred  one  of  a  rounded  development 
of  all  his  powers  by  their  vigorous  and  constant  employment. 
This  aim  we  have  seen  fairly  inaugurated,  and  we  need  not 
delay  to  watch  its  long  pursuit,  or  to  appraise  the  degree  of  its 
attainment.  But  with  reference  to  what  might  be  called  Goethe's 
conversion,  and  to  all  conversions,  I  will  enter  this  caveat,  that 
they  can  seldom  be  regarded  as  purely  mental  and  voluntary 
processes.  The  functional  change,  the  shifting  of  the  centre  of 
vitality,  is  by  no  means  to  be  overlooked.  "  Quand  nos  vices 
nous  quittent,  nous  nous  flattons  de  la  creance  que  c'est  nous  qui 
les  quittons."  A  purpose,  once  formed,  may  inhabit  a  psychic 
medium  and  react  thence  on  the  physical  organism.  But  in  its 
formation  the  body  certainly  takes  a  hand. 

The  temperament  of  Beethoven  was  more  purposive,  because 
more  self-conscious,  than  that  of  Mozart.  He  lived  much  longer, 
for  one  thing,  but  that  is  not  the  sole  explanation  of  the  contrast. 
He  spoke  in  his  childhood  of  one  day  becoming  a  great  man. 
From  the  first  he  had  a  high  sense  of  his  dignity,  based  without 
doubt  on  a  consciousness  of  exceptional  powers.  When  a 
nobleman  at  Count  Browne's  interrupted  Kies  and  himself  by 
talking  while  they  played  a  duet,  "  Beethoven  stopped  playing, 
saying  in  no  gentle  voice,  '  I  play  no  more  for  such  hogs  ! ' 
In  the  exclusive  society  of  Vienna  he  was,  as  a  young  man, 
accepted  at  his  own  valuation,  although  with  refreshing 
brusquerie  he  ignored  all  the  nuances  of  conventional  usage. 
The  calamity  of  deafness  which  overwhelmed  him  at  thirty 
may  explain  the  fact  that,  though  constantly  "  in  love  "  with 
one  fair  aristocrat  or  another,  Beethoven  did  not  marry.  Or 
there  may  have  been  some  other  physical  disqualification, 

1  Oblivious  of  the  fact  that  he  had  made  his  own  dramatic  debut  by  cele- 
bration of  the  career  of  a  robber  chief,  and  on  very  similar  lines. 

2  La  Rochefoucauld,  Reflexions  Morales. 


r.OETHK. 
From  a  I'lock  lent  by  Messrs.  IY.  Rider  <5-  Son  Ltd. 


To  face  f>.  200. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      201 

unknown  and  unacknowledged,  even  to  himself.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  own  justification  of  his  solitary  life,  which  irked 
him  greatly  at  times,  clearly  implies  a  growing  conviction  that 
celibacy  was  imposed  upon  him  by  duty  to  his  art-vocation. 
"  For  thee,  poor  Beethoven,"  he  wrote  after  his  rejection  by 
Therese,  "  there  is  no  outward  happiness  :  only  in  the  ideal 
world  wilt  thou  find  friends — everything  must  emanate  from 
thy  inward  self."  When  one  thinks  what  the  loss  of  his  hearing 
meant  for  Beethoven,  what  it  must  have  been  for  him,  of  all 
men,  to  live  in  perpetual  silence,  it  may  sound  heartless  to  say 
that  he  owed  much  to  that  loss,  and  that  the  world  was  the 
gainer  thereby.  The  storm  raised  within  his  proud  spirit 
by  this  ruthless  blow  may  be  dimly  imagined  by  help  of  the 
following  words,  written  in  1801  (set.  31)  :  "  Your  Beethoven 
is  very  unhappy,  at  strife  with  Nature  and  Creator."  And 
again,  "  Too  often  have  I  cursed  Him  for  exposing  His  creatures 
to  be  the  sport  of  accident.  ...  I  have  again  and  again  cursed 
my  existence.  ...  It  would  not  take  much  to  induce  me 
to  put  an  end  to  my  life.  Only  my  Art  restrains  me,  and  it  is 
impossible  to  leave  the  world  before  I  have  finished  all  I  feel 
capable  of  doing."  These  words  must,  I  am  convinced,  be 
accepted  literally  as  a  simple  statement  of  fact.  But  for  the 
purpose  that  impelled  him,  the  ideal  he  aspired  to,  Beethoven 
could  not  have  lived  out  his  life ;  and  this  is  perhaps  as  good 
an  example  as  one  could  find  of  the  intensification  of  personality 
and  the  positive  attitude  towards  life  effected  by  definite  self- 
conscious  aims.  The  results  of  the  fiery  ordeal  through  which 
Beethoven  had  passed,  and  of  the  dearly-won  victory  achieved 
over  his  own  rebellious  instincts,  are  clearly  indicated  in  the 
fifth  (C  minor)  Symphony,  published  in  his  thirty-eighth  year. 
"  In  this  Symphony  Beethoven  is  born,  the  great  free  courageous 
Beethoven,  whose  power  is  light  from  within.  The  limitation, 
the  suffering  is  overcome."  l  From  the  four  opening  notes, 
ominous  of  impending  disaster,  a  whole  theme  is  built  up. 
"  If  one,"  says  Mr.  Shedlock,  "  were  forced  to  name  the  most 
representative  work  of  Beethoven  in  the  plenitude  of  his  power, 
it  would  surely  be  the  'C  Minor.'  ...  We  cannot  help 

]  L.  Nohl. 


202  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

feeling,  quite  apart  from  the  '  Tims  Fate  knocks  at  the  Door,' 
explanation  of  the  four  opening  notes  .  .  .  that  some  great 
drama  is  being  enacted  in  tones."  The  composer  informed 
Neate  that  he  always  worked  to  a  picture  or  programme  in  his 
mind,  and  actually  contemplated  the  publication  of  an  edition 
of  his  works  in  which  the  poetic  basis  of  each  should  be  set 
forth.  To  give  some  faint  conception  of  what  life  was  to 
Beethoven,  of  the  cruel  isolation  imposed  upon  him  by  Fate, 
of  the  strength  implied  by  his  triumph  over  such  conditions, 
I  will  quote  a  vivid  description  of  him  as  he  appeared  in  his  later 
years.  It  was  at  an  inn  in  Vienna,  where  a  few  congenial 
spirits  had  met,  that  he  unexpectedly  entered.  "  All  were  full 
of  the  greatest  respect  when  he  came  in,  the  man  from  whose 
lion  head  streamed  grey  locks  like  a  mane,  who,  on  entering, 
cast  around  a  sharp  look,  but  wavered  in  his  movements  as  if 
he  walked  in  a  dream.  So  he  went  in,  sat  down  to  his  glass, 
smoked  out  of  a  big  pipe,  and  closed  his  eyes.  When  spoken 
or  rather  shouted  to  by  an  acquaintance,  he  opened  his  eyelids 
like  an  eagle  startled  out  of  sleep,  smiled  sadly,  and  handed  the 
speaker  a  memorandum-book  with  a  pencil  which  he  drew 
from  a  breast  pocket.  After  the  question  was  answered  he  sank 
again  into  meditation.  But  sometimes  he  drew  a  thicker  book 
oub  of  the  pocket  of  his  old  grey  overcoat,  and  wrote  with 
half-shut  eyes.  '  What  is  he  writing  ?  '  inquired  our  informant 
one  evening  from  his  neighbour,  Franz  Schubert.  '  He  is 
composing  !  '  was  the  answer."  * 

With  regard  to  Walter  Scott,  although  he  was  rather  forced 
into  Literature  by  the  sheer  strength  of  his  talent,  than  guided 
by  any  deliberate  choice  or  preference,  it  seems  that  his  decision 
(set.  17)  to  read  for  the  Bar,  instead  of  adopting  his  father's 
occupation  of  Writer  to  the  Signet,  was  due  to  a  feeling  that 
this  would  be  more  compatible  with  literary  pursuits.  He 
must  therefore  at  this  age  have  had  some  intention  of  utilising 
his  gift  "  as  a  staff  "  at  least,  if  not  "  as  a  cratch."  Four  years 
later  (set.  21)  Scott  was  duly  called  to  the  Bar,  and  it  was  at 
about  this  time  that  he,  in  company  with  Robert  Shortreed, 
made  his  first  visit  to  Liddesdale.  These  "  raids  "  became  an 

1 L.  Nohl. 


BKETHOVEN. 


To /Hit  /.    702. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      203 

annual  institution,  continued  for  seven  successive  years,  in  the 
course  of  which  Scott  explored  every  rivulet  to  its  source,  and 
every  ruined  "  peel "  from  foundation  to  battlement.  "  He 
was  makin'  himsel'  all  the  time,"  said  Mr.  Shortreed,  "  but  he 
did  not  ken,  maybe,  what  he  was  about  till  years  had  passed." 
In  this  connection  it  is  instructive  to  recall  Scott's  own  remark 
as  to  the  respective  attractions  of  antiquarian  study  and  of 
literature.  "  People  may  say  this  and  that  of  the  pleasure  of 
fame  or  of  profit  as  a  motive  of  writing.  I  think  the  only  pleasure 
is  in  the  actual  exertion  and  research,  and  I  would  no  more 
write  on  any  other  terms  than  I  would  hunt  merely  to  dine  upon 
hare-soup.  At  the  same  time,  if  fame  and  profit  came  unasked, 
I  would  no  more  quarrel  with  them  than  with  the  soup." 

In  1798,  Scott  (set.  27)  married  a  Miss  Carpenter,  and 
in  the  following  year  published  his  translation  of  Goethe's 
romantic  drama,  Goetz  von  Berlichingen.  Lockhart  points  out 
the  derivation  of  the  death  scene  of  "  Marmion,"  and  the 
episode  of  the  storm  in  Ivanhoe  from  Goethe's  play,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  productive  impulse  of  Scott  was 
greatly  stimulated  by  contact  with  the  genius  of  the  German 
poet.  Three  years  later  appeared  two  volumes  of  his  Border 
Minstrelsy,  a  collection  of  ballads  both  ancient  and  modern, 
of  which  one  critic  remarked  that  it  "  contained  the  elements 
of  a  hundred  historical  romances."  Scott  had  now,  therefore, 
ample  material  at  his  disposal,  and  at  about  this  time  began  to 
write  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  the  irregular  metre  of  which 
seems  to  have  been  suggested  by  his  having  heard  a  year  or 
two  before,  a  casual  recital  of  Coleridge's  Christabel.  While 
Scott  was  at  work  upon  The  Lay  he  received  a  visit  from  Words- 
worth (at  Lasswade,  Sept.  1803),  who  records  the  impression 
that  Scott,  though  confident  of  his  ability  to  earn  more  by 
literature  than  he  would  ever  wish  to  possess,  was  at  heart  less 
interested  in  his  literary  labours  or  reputation  than  in  his  bodily 
sports,  exercises,  and  social  amusements.  Fifteen  months 
later  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  was  published.  It  scored  an 
instant  and  triumphant  success.  "  In  the  history  of  British 
poetry,"  says  Lockhart,  "  nothing  had  ever  equalled  the  demand 
for  the  Lay."  Scott  cleared  £769  by  it ;  it  was  obvious,  therefore, 


204  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

that  Providence  intended  him  for  the  not  quite  gentlemanly 
profession  of  literature,  and  with  true  Caledonian  sense  and 
piety  he — accepted  his  fate  !  But  his  true  life-purpose,  like 
Titian's  (but  with  a  difference),  really  lay  outside  the  sphere  of 
his  Art,  which  was  for  him,  too,  always  a  means  (to  pecuniary 
and  social  success),  never  an  end  in  itself.  The  fact  no  doubt 
is,  as  Lockhart  shrewdly  suggests  (apropos  of  Scott's  modest 
refusal  to  be  named  in  comparison  with  Burns),  that  the  very 
facility  with  which  he  produced,  the  sheer  immensity  of  his 
talent — in  genius  he  was  by  no  means  immense — caused  Scott 
to  undervalue  his  own  productions.  What  came  from  his  pen 
so  spontaneously  and  so  inexhaustibly,  he  could  not  seriously 
regard  as  of  great  value.  His  instinct  perhaps  warned  him 
that  the  day  of  Homeric  naivete  (appearances  notwithstanding) 
had  passed,  never  to  return.  So  he  made  hay  while  the  sun  shone 
— first  poetical  hay,  then,  when  that  crop  thinned  and  its  market 
proved  precarious,  wain  upon  wain  of  wholesome  bountiful 
prose  fodder.  The  SherifHom,  the  clerkship  of  Session,  the 
editing  of  Dryden,  the  partnership  with  Ballantyne,  the 
Quarterly — every  probable  or  improbable  source  of  material 
advancement  was  eagerly  seized  upon  ;  and  when,  in  his  fortieth 
year,  the  first  100  acres  of  his  Abbotsford  estate  became  his 
property  (so  soon  to  grow  to  a  thousand),  the  chimera  was  born 
in  his  brain  which  usurped  there  the  place  of  a  purpose  worthy 
of  power  so  tremendous. 

Turner's  career  has  this  in  common  with  Walter  Scott's, 
that  his  instinctive  bias  towards  the  art  he  practised  (which  in 
his  case  declared  itself  definitely  at  the  age  of  five)  was  so  over- 
whelming as  to  render  it  independent  of  any  formal  determina- 
tion. He  was  a  painter  by  necessity  of  inborn  temperament 
and  power  ;  and  on  this  necessity,  from  first  to  last,  the  achieve- 
ments of  his  long  and  arduous  life  were  based.  He  accepted 
it,  certainly,  in  more  wholehearted  fashion  than  Scott  ever  did  ; 
loved  his  work  and  his  pictures  more  even  than  the  money  he 
loved  so  much  too  dearly — and,  so  far,  may  justly  be  regarded  as 
a  purposeful  individual.  But  a  man  of  purpose  in  the  higher 
Goethean  sense,  that  is,  a  man  of  clear  self-consciousness,  of 
well-defined  aims,  he  never  was  nor  could  have  been,  since  he 


SIK    \\AI.TKK    SCOTT. 


/"<>/»«•/.  204. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      205 

lacked  the  essential  factor,  of  intellectuality,  of  the  degree  such 
attainment  implies.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  that,  though 
never  idle,  indeed,  always  extraordinarily  industrious,  Turner 
drifted  through  life,  and  was  only  saved  by  the  sheer  constraint 
of  the  genius  that  would  not  let  him  rest  from  becoming  the 
victim  of  his  inordinate  sensuality.  In  other  words,  though  a 
very  great  artist,  his  personality,  though  by  no  means  lacking 
in  fine  points,1  must  in  many  respects  be  pronounced  common- 
place, and,  in  some,  ignoble. 

This  reading  may  seem  too  severe,  and  is  odious  to  write, 
but  I  think  it  is  borne  out  by  the  facts.  If  it  make  Ruskin 
turn  in  his  grave,  so  much  the  worse  for  Ruskin,  whose  hero- 
worship  was  carried  to  unbounded  lengths.  "  He  knows  a  great 
deal  more  about  my  pictures  than  I  do.  He  puts  things  into 
my  head,  and  points  out  meanings  in  them  which  I  never 
intended."  This  is  Turner's  own  verdict  on  his  commentator, 
and  the  reader  may  choose  between  the  belief  that  no  such 
meanings  are  to  be  found  in  the  pictures,  and  that,  though 
there,  Turner  did  not  consciously  intend  them.  He  was  a 
man  of  superb  imagination,  but  it  was  mainly  of  the  sensuous 
order. 

Gustave  Flaubert  was  a  man  of  intense  and  concentrated 
purpose — but  it  is  a  purpose  by  no  means  easy  to  define,  at 
any  rate  in  its  later  stage  of  full  and  mature  development. 
His  imaginative  bent  was  decisive  from  the  first,  and  was 
fostered  in  childhood  by  the  influence  of  a  nurse  deeply  imbued 
with  the  folklore  and  tradition  of  the  country-side.  Pere 
Mignot,  too,  a  friend  of  the  family,  liked  nothing  better  than 
"  to  spend  long  hours  in  reading  Don  Quixote  to  the  handsome 
dreamy  boy."  And  his  parents,  if,  as  appeared  later,  they 
wished  to  make  a  lawyer  of  him,  erred  fatally  in  encouraging 
his  taste  for  literature  and  for  amateur  theatricals.  He  did, 
indeed,  go  so  far  as  to  attempt  the  study  paternally  prescribed 
for  him,  but  soon  gave  it  up  in  despair.  "  I  can  see  nothing 
more  stupid  than  jurisprudence,  if  it  is  not  the  study  of  it," 

1  To  save  a  patron,  involved  in  pecuniary  difficulties,  from  sacrificing  some 
valuable  timber,  Turner  secretly  forwarded  a  large  sum,  probably  £40,000. 
He  was  repaid  through  the  agent,  his  name  never  being  disclosed. 


206  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

he  writes.  "  I  work  at  it  with  profound  disgust,  and  that 
deprives  me  of  all  heart  and  spirit  for  everything  else."  After 
all,  his  father  was  a  wealthy  man,  not  likely  to  be  particularly 
harsh  to  any  one,  least  of  all  his  only  son.  Gustave  drifted 
into  literature  by  natural  compulsion  of  inability  to  take  any 
real  interest  in  other  activities.  The  form  which  that  literature 
assumed,  his  passionate  veracity — realism,  if  you  prefer  the 
label — was  presumably  not  unrelated  to  the  fact  that  his 
father  was  an  able  and  enthusiastic  surgeon,  who  no  doubt 
knew  how  to  inspire  kindred  spirits  with  something  of  his 
own  devotion  to  the  scientific  ideal.  To  such  a  man,  as  Mr. 
Tarver  justly  remarks,  a  deft  operation  or  a  fine  dissection 
makes  a  strong  aesthetic  appeal :  they  are  things  of  beauty 
to  his  discerning  eye.  Gustave  and  his  little  sister  had  often 
watched  through  the  keyhole  this  worthy  man,  immersed  in 
the  work  he  loved.  He  inevitably,  therefore,  imbibed  a  high 
scorn  for  all  squeamishness  in  his  own  work :  determined 
that,  the  day  of  honeyed  fantasy  being  over,  Art  should  learn 
from  Science  the  secret  of  unflinching  courage  and  unbending 
loyalty  to  the  fact.  Flaubert,  in  his  early  youth,  had  been 
remarkable,  not  only  for  his  heroic  stature  and  beauty,  but 
for  superabundant  vitality  and  rollicking  spirits.  With  this, 
however,  was  associated  a  general  hyperaesthesia,  which,  on 
his  reaching  the  age  of  twenty-one,  culminated  in  a  severe 
hystero-epileptic  attack.  To  this  illness,  and  to  the  extremely 
drastic  treatment  which  he  underwent  in  consequence,  I  have 
already  referred.  I  mention  it  now,  because,  in  my  opinion, 
it  has  an  important  bearing  on  the  natural  history  of  his  artistic 
aims  and  the  determination  of  his  career  as  a  Recluse  of  Art. 
Years  afterwards,  Flaubert  writes  thus  to  George  Sand : 
"  What  you  say  to  me  of  your  dear  little  ones  has  moved  me 
to  the  bottom  of  my  soul !  Why  is  that  not  mine  ?  Yet  I 
was  born  with  the  capacity  for  all  tenderness.  But  one  does 
not  make  one's  destiny,  one  submits  to  it.  I  was  a  coward 
in  my  youth.  I  was  afraid  of  life.  Everything  gets  its  reward." 
This  "  fear  of  life,"  to  which  Flaubert  refers  more  than  once, 
may  have  been  originated,  must  at  least  have  been  greatly 
intensified,  by  the  vital  depletion  consequent  upon  his  illness 


Tl'RNER. 

Engra-'C.H-y  J .  fl.  //»,, //>•<„„  „„  anginal  sketch. 


To/accf-.  206. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      207 

and  its  treatment.  Flaubert  saw  clearly  that  to  accomplish 
anything  really  great  in  literature,  it  was  necessary  to  con- 
centrate his  energies,  and  severely  to  limit  himself  by  the 
repudiation  of  collateral  activities.  Even  marriage  would 
be  a  fatal  distraction,  a  "horrible  apostasy."  Thus  he  writes 
to  a  woman  who  made  a  desperate  attempt  to  annex  him  : 
"  When  a  man  wishes,  be  he  small  or  great,  to  concern  himself 
with  the  works  of  God,  he  must  begin,  if  only  from  considerations 
of  health,  by  putting  himself  in  a  position  in  which  he  cannot 
be  duped  by  them."  From  his  thirtieth  to  his  fifty-eighth 
(last)  year,  he  lived  quietly  and  laboriously  at  Croisset,  only 
leaving  it  for  occasional  visits  to  Paris,  and,  in  I860,]  for 
inspecting  the  site  of  Carthage.  His  "  practical  dogma  for 
the  artist's  life "  was,  that  "  one  must  take  one's  existence 
in  two  parts  :  live  like  a  bourgeois,  and  think  like  a  demi-god." 

Had  Flaubert,  in  the  work  which  he  took  so  seriously,  any 
didactic  aim  ?  No  more  uncompromising  champion  of  the 
"  Art  for  Art's  sake  "  view  ever  lived.  He  shall  speak  for 
himself.  "  I  read  at  Jerusalem  a  Socialist  book  (Comte's 
Essay  on  Positivism).  It  was  lent  to  me  by  a  wild  Catholic, 
who  insisted  by  main  force  that  I  should  read  it  in  order  to  see, 
etc.  etc.  I  turned  over  some  pages  of  it :  it  is  consumingly 
stupid.  .  .  .  There  are  in  it  immense  mines  of  comedy,  quite 
a  California  of  the  grotesque.  There  is,  perhaps,  something 
else  as  well.  That  may  be.  One  of  the  first  studies  to  which 
I  shall  betake  myself  on  my  return,  will  certainly  be  that  of  all 
these  deplorable  Utopias,  which  agitate  our  Society  and 
threaten  to  cover  it  with  ruins.  .  .  .  What  does  the  face  that 
to-morrow  will  bear  matter ;  we  only  see  the  face  of  to-day. 
It  cuts  hideous  mugs  truly,  and  therefore  enters  the  better  into 
romanticism." 

No  doubt  Flaubert  believed  that  great  Art  has  (incidentally) 
a  moral  influence  and  function ;  that  the  heroic  attitude  of 
the  artist  will  be  insensibly  conveyed  to  the  mind  of  his  worthy 
reader.  Thus  in  his  Address  to  the  Middle  Class,  on  the  refusal 
of  the  Town  Council  of  Rouen  to  sanction  a  monument  to  the 
poet  Bouilhet,  he  wrote  : l  "  Germany  has  been  sufficiently 
1  After  the  Franco-Prussian  War. 


208  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

joked,  I  presume,  on  the  subject  of  her  theorisers,  her  dreamers, 
her  misty  poets.  You  have  seen,  alas !  where  her  mists  have 
brought  her.  I  have  an  idea  that  the  dreamer  Fichte  re-organised 
the  Prussian  army  after  Jena,  and  that  the  poet  Koerner  sent 
some  Uhlans  against  us  about  the  year  1813." 

In  the  end,  Flaubert's  ever-increasing  hatred  of  the  sordid 
utilitarianism  which  he,  sometimes  unjustly,  attributed  to  the 
bourgeoisie  of  his  day,  altogether  conquered  his  objection  to 
the  didactic  in  Art.  His  last,  and  perhaps  greatest  work, 
Bouvard  et  Pecuchet,1  is  from  beginning  to  end  a  passionate 
protest  (by  exposure  of  results)  against  the  meanness,  frivolity, 
shallowness,  futility,  and  spite  of  average  commonplace  men 
and  women. 

1  Flaubert  read  and  annotated  some  1500  volumes  in  preparation  for  the 
writing  of  the  400  octavo  pages  of  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet,  which  he  had  all  but 
completed  when  he  died. 


GUSTAVK    FLAUBERT. 


IX 

THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE— Continued 

III.  Intellectual  type — IV.  Ethico-religious  type — The  higher  criticism — 
V.  Recapitulation. 

III.  Intellectual  Type. — Of  the  boyhood  and  early  youth  of 
Bacon  we  know  little,  except  that  he  entered  Trinity  College 
in  his  twelfth  year,  and  acquired  there  a  reputation  for  pre- 
cocious learning  and  for  hostility  to  the  prevailing  Aristotelian 
philosophy.  But  at  the  age  of  twenty-four  he  published  a 
short  Latin  treatise,  whose  title,  Temporis  Partus  Maximus, 
speaks  volumes  concerning  its  author's  ambition.  His  aims 
from  the  first  were  twofold,  practical  and  theoretic ;  the  first 
perhaps  moderate  but  by  no  means  moderately  desired ;  the 
second,  vast,  almost  illimitable,  in  scope.  Bacon's  primary 
motive  in  seeking  public  office  may  have  been  personal  ambi- 
tion, the  craving  for  wealth  and  power,  but  that  he  also  sincerely 
desired  the  advancement  of  the  national  welfare  is  a  fact  no 
competent  judge  will  deny.  In  politics  he  began  and  ended 
as  a  moderate  reformer ;  in  regard  to  the  religious  controversy, 
he  advocated  tolerance  of  both  Puritan  and  Romanist  extremes. 
He  was  no  democrat.  "  I  do  not  love  the  word  '  people,'  "  he 
confessed,  holding  that  good  was  to  be  done  for,  not  by,  them. 
It  may  be  counted  to  his  credit,  that,  by  his  opposition  to  her 
unconstitutional  attempt  to  force  the  Commons  to  confer  with 
the  Lords  on  Supply  (1592),  he,  at  the  outset  of  his  political 
career  (aet.  31),  incurred  the  resentment  of  Elizabeth.  And 
to  this  fact  the  slowness  of  his  advance  to  high  office  was  no 
doubt  largely  due.  Not  until  Elizabeth  had  been  four  years 
dead,  did  he  (in  1607,  at  the  age  of  forty-six)  reap  the  first- 
fruits  of  his  fifteen  years'  urgency  in  solicitation  by  obtaining 
14 


210  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  posts  of  Solicitor-General  and  Clerk  to  the  Star  Chamber. 
The  Advancement  of  Learning  had  appeared  two  years 
before  he  thus  at  length  set  his  foot  on  the  ladder  of  power. 
His  income  was  now  £5000  per  annum,  equivalent  to  about 
eight  times  as  much  in  the  present  day.  However  much  it 
might  be,  it  would  never  suffice  him  :  he  shared  to  the  full 
the  love  of  pomp  and  magnificence  characteristic  of  his  day, 
and  to  this  fact,  and  his  consequent  embarrassments,  the  tragedy 
of  his  fall  was  in  great  measure  due. 

So  much  for  the  practical  aims  of  Bacon's  life,  which  are, 
after  all;  of  slight  interest  in  comparison  with  his  philosophical 
projects.  In  the  De  Interpretation  Naturce  Pro -osmium, 
written  somewhere  between  his  forty-second  and  forty-fifth 
years,  Bacon  wrote  as  follows  :  "  If  a  man  should  succeed  not 
in  striking  out  some  new  invention,  .  .  .  but  in  kindling  a 
light  in  nature,  ...  a  light  that  .  .  .  should  presently  dis- 
close ...  all  that  is  most  hidden  and\  ecret  in  the  world — 
that  man  would  be  the  benefactor  indeed  of  the  human  race.  .  .  . 
For  myself,  I  found  that  I  was  fitted  for  nothing  so  well  as  for 
the  study  of  truth."  Thus  clearly,  in  the  noontide  of  his  power, 
Bacon  epitomised  the  large  constructive  aim,  of  which,  in  its 
negative  phase,  the  germ  had  appeared  in  his  boyish  antipathy 
to  the  barren  logic-chopping  of  the  University.  In  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning  (published,  in  its  first  form,  at  forty-four), 
Bacon  is,  however,  still  greatly  occupied  in  controverting  the 
old  unfruitful  way  of  philosophising ;  and  even  in  the  Novum 
Organum,  which,  after  twelve  years  of  annual  revision,  if  not 
re-writing,  saw  the  light  in  his  sixtieth  year,  the  old  cudgels 
have  by  no  means  been  laid  aside.  "  The  Logic  of  the  Novum 
Organum,"  says  Prof.  Nichol,  "  differs  from  the  old  in  seeking 
'  non  argumenta  sed  artes,'  in  rejecting  the  syllogism  and  avoid- 
ing hasty  generalisations,  and  in  assuming  nothing  as  true 
without  experimental  verification.  .  .  .  He  thought  to  discover 
a  method  (of  investigation)  so  exhaustive  as  to  be  as  certain 
in  its  results  as  a  demonstration  of  Euclid,  so  mechanical 
that  when  once  understood  all  men  might  employ  it,  yet  so 
startling  that  it  was  to  be  as  a  new  sun  to  the  borrowed  beams 
of  the  stars."  But,  after  all,  it  is  in  his  own  words  that  the 


SIR    K.     HACON,    VISCOUNT    ST.    AI.KANS. 
EngrarcJ  H  -V.  freeman. 


To  face  />.  210. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      211 

central  purpose  of  his  life  has  been  most  tersely  and  compre- 
hensively stated  :  "  Meditor  instaurationem  philosophise  ejus 
modi  quae  nihil  inanis  aut  abstracti  habeat,  quseque  vitas 
humanse  conditiones  in  melius  provehat." 

In  describing  the  vocation  of  Galileo,  I  have  already  alluded 
to  his  boyish  fondness  for  constructing  toys  and  models.  Mis- 
trust of  scholastic  methods  was  in  the  air  of  the  latter  part  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  and  it  is  therefore  not  surprising  that, 
while  studying  medicine  at  Pisa,  Galileo,  like  Bacon  (his  senior 
by  only  three  years),  attracted  notice  by  his  boldness  in  contro- 
verting the  dogmas  of  Aristotelianism.  What  is  more  note- 
worthy is,  that  already,  before  he  was  out  of  his  teens,  mere 
iconoclasm  did  not  suffice  Galileo — "  he  felt  himself  destined 
to  found  a  new  school,  rational  and  experimental."  Medical 
study  proved  uncongenial ;  he  gradually  became  absorbed  in 
mathematics  ;  and  discovered  the  isochronism  of  the  pendulum. 
For  this  idea — epoch-making  for  astronomy — he  may  have 
been  indebted  to  Leonardo,  for  it  seems  that  Mazenta,  the 
preserver  of  that  artist's  manuscripts,  was  one  of  Galileo's 
fellow-students  at  the  University,  and  many  of  the  suggestions 
there  mooted  re-appear  in  his  writings.  At  what  precise  period 
Galileo  became  a  convert  to  the  Copernican  theory  is  uncertain — 
probably  soon  after  he  received  (set.  26)  the  Pisan  lectureship 
in  mathematics  ;  at  any  rate,  he  asserts  that  he  taught  the 
recognised  Ptolemaic  system  for  some  time  after  he  had  privately 
become  convinced  of  its  fallacy.  If — as  is  probable — Sagredo, 
in  his  Dialogue  on  the  Ptolemaic  and  Copernican  Systems,  re- 
presents his  own  personality,  we  have  an  interesting  glimpse 
of  the  method  by  which  he  was  led  to  investigate  the  new  theory. 
He  makes  Sagredo  say  he  has  noticed  that  whereas  converts 
to  the  Copernican  view  had  always  been  first  on  the  Ptolemaic 
side,  and  were  well  acquainted  with  both  systems,  upholders 
of  the  absolute  theory  were  always  quite  ignorant  of  the  new 
one.  Hence  Sagredo  (i.e.  Galileo)  became  "  very  curious 
to  dive  into  the  bottom  of  this  business."  In  1592  (a:-t.  28), 
Galileo  left  Pisa  and  took  up  the  post  of  professor  of  mathematics 
at  Padua.  The  University  was  in  ill  odour  with  the  Jesuits 
at  Padua,  and  his  association  with  it  may  have  had  much  to 


212  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

do  with  the  persecution  he  subsequently  underwent.  In  1609 
(set.  45),  Galileo  constructed  his  first  telescope,  and  as  it 
was  this  achievement  which,  by  furnishing  the  means  of  his 
astronomical  discoveries,  really  formed  the  basis  of  his  im- 
mortality, I  will  quote  the  account  he  gives  of  his  extremely 
characteristic  method  of  procedure.  Rumour  had  reached  him 
of  the  haphazard  construction  by  a  Dutch  spectacle-maker 
of  a  tube,  by  looking  through  which  far  objects  were  apparently 
brought  close  to  the  eye.  He  at  once  set  himself  to  consider 
the  feasibility  of  such  an  instrument.  "  I  argued  as  follows  : 
the  contrivance  consists  either  of  ooe  glass  or  more — one  is 
not  sufficient,  since  it  must  be  either  convex,  concave,  or  plane  ; 
the  last  does  not  produce  any  sensible  alteration  in  objects, 
the  concave  diminishes  them  ;  it  is  true  that  the  convex  magni- 
fies, but  it  renders  them  confused  and  indistinct :  consequently 
one  glass  is  insufficient  to  produce  the  desired  effect.  .  .  . 
Bearing  in  mind  that  the  plane  glass  causes  no  change,  ...  I 
therefore  applied  myself  to  make  experiments  on  combinations 
of  the  other  two  kinds,  and  thus  obtained  that  of  which  I  was 
in  search."  This  inductive  and  experimental  procedure  is 
now  so  much  a  matter  of  course,  that  the  reader  will  perhaps 
hardly  realise  how  revolutionary  it  was  in  1609.  Wielded  by  a 
man  of  such  mental  resource  and  fecundity  as  Galileo,  it  pro- 
duced results  which  to  his  contemporaries  must  have  seemed 
well-nigh  miraculous.  The  astrologers  trembled  when  celestial 
bodies  were  related  to  the  homely  earth  by  his  announcement 
of  the  four  moons  which  revolved  about  Jupiter.  "  Oh,  my 
dear  Kepler,"  he  writes,  "  how  I  wish  that  we  could  have  one 
hearty  laugh  together.  Here,  at  Padua,  is  the  principal 
professor  of  philosophy,  whom  I  have  repeatedly  and  urgently 
requested  to  look  at  the  moon  and  planets  through  my  glass, 
which  he  pertinaciously  refuses  to  do.  Why  are  you  not 
here  ?  What  shouts  of  laughter  we  should  have  at  this  glorious 
folly  !  And  to  hear  the  professor  of  philosophy  at  Pisa  labouring 
before  the  Grand  Duke  with  logical  arguments,  as  with  magical 
incantations,  to  charm  the  new  planets  out  of  the  sky."  But 
even  Kepler,  the  would-be  "  legislator  of  the  skies,"  has  to  be 
rebuked  for  presumptuous  apriorism,  when,  by  an  unsupported 


GALILEO. 
From  a  picture  by  Ramsay  in  Trinity  College,  Ca 


To  face  p.  212. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  .PURPOSE      213 

theory,  he  attempts  to  "  account  for  "  the  number  of  Jovian 
satellites,  and  for  those  which  he  expected  to  meet  with  else- 
where.    "  How  great  and  common  appears  to  me  the  error  of 
those  who  persist  in  making  their  knowledge  and  apprehension 
the  measure  of  the  apprehension  and  knowledge  of  God.  .  .  . 
Nature  has  other  scales  of  perfection,  which  we  cannot  compre- 
hend, and  rather  seem  disposed  to  class  among  imperfections. 
.  .  .  God,  with  no  regard  to  our  imaginary  symmetries,  .  .  . 
has  shaken  the  stars  out  from  His  hand  as  if  by  chance."     How 
well  Galileo  learnt  the  true  significance  of  the  revolt  against 
scholasticism  and  the  determination  to  replace  it  by  tentative 
and  inductive  procedure,  which  were  the  negative  and  positive 
aspects  of  his  lifelong  purpose,  is  proved  by  the  following  rebuke 
of  a  too  credulous  pupil :    "  You  almost  make  me  laugh  by 
saying  that  these  clear  observations  are  sufficient  to  convince 
the  most  obstinate.  .  .  .  Not  even  the  testimony  of  the  stars 
would  suffice,  were  they  to  descend  on  earth  to  speak  for  them- 
selves. ...  Of  advancing  in  popular  opinion  or  gaining  the 
assent  of  the  book-philosophers,  let  us  abandon  both  the  hope 
and  the  desire."     That,  in  the  face  of  such  obstacles,  men  can 
persist  in  their  self-imposed  tasks,  and  carry  them  through, 
surely  suggests,  at  least,  that  purpose  is  not  merely  formal,  no 
barren  concomitant  of  predetermined  activities,  but  a  thing 
of  power,  deeply-rooted  in  reality,  a  dynamic  impulse,  capable 
of  reacting,  for  good  or  evil,  upon  life  and  circumstance. 

In  point  of  intellect,  William  Harvey  was  by  no  means  the 
equal  of  Galileo.  He  was  no  philosopher  :  a  man  of  acute 
penetration  rather  than  of  deep  and  comprehensive  mind. 
His  purpose  is,  therefore,  more  tangible,  more  specific,  and, 
epoch-making  as  it  nevertheless  proved,  more  limited,  than  that 
of  the  Italian  physicist  and  astronomer.  Harvey  graduated 
at  Cambridge  in  1597  (set.  19),  having  presumably  profited 
by  the  noble  example,  possibly  from  the  personal  encourage- 
ment and  interest,  of  Johannes  Caius,  "  an  enthusiastic  student, 
and  the  friend  of  all  the  great  scholars  of  the  day."  He  then 
travelled  through  France  and  Italy,  and  at  the  Jurist  University 
of  Padua  became  a  pupil  of  the  surgeon  and  anatomist,  Fabricius, 
then  engaged  in  perfecting  his  knowledge  of  those  valves  of  the 


214  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

human  veins  which  he  had,  not  indeed  discovered,  but  rescued 
from  oblivion.  Misled  by  the  current  theories,  Fabricius 
remained  quite  at  sea  as  to  the  function  of  the  valves  whose 
anatomy  he  had  so  well  described.  The  heart  was  looked  upon 
as,  primarily,  the  centre  of  vital  heat ;  and  this  heat  or  "  caloric  " 
was  itself  an  entity.  The  heart  was  supposed,  by  an  active 
dilatation,  to  suck  blood  out  of  the  veins,  to  impart  vital  heat 
to  it,  and  then  to  expel  it  into  the  veins  again.  The  arteries  were 
supposed  to  contain  air,  rhythmically  absorbed  and  expelled 
through  pores  of  the  skin,  in  order  to  "  fan  "  or  cool  the  blood. 
Such  movement  as  the  blood  underwent  was,  on  this  view,  not 
(as  Harvey  has  taught  the  world)  a  circular  movement  through 
the  arteries  to  the  extremities  and  back  through  the  veins,  but 
a  to-and-fro  movement  in  the  veins  alone.  Fabricius  accord- 
ingly regarded  the  valves  as  a  mere  safeguard  against  overfilling 
of  the  veins  of  the  extremities,  but  failed  to"  see _  that  they 
practically  inhibited  any  flow  through  the  veins 'except  towards 
the  heart.  "  How  Fabricius,  a  man  who  did  such  work,"  says 
Dr.  Osier,  "  could  have  been  so  blinded  as  to  overlook  the 
truth  which  was  tumbling  out,  so  to  speak,  at  his  feet,  is  to  us 
incomprehensible.  But  his  eyes  were  sealed  " — by  that  most 
impervious  of  all  bandages,  a  preconceived  theory.  "  Was  it 
while  listening  to  the  ingenious  explanation  of  his  master," 
the  false  explanation,  "  that  in  a  period  of  abstraction  .  .  . 
there  came  to  Harvey  a  heaven-sent  moment,  a  sudden  inspira- 
tion, a  passing  doubt  nursed  for  long  in  silence,  which  ultimately 
grew  into  the  great  truth  of  1613  ?  "  *  However  this  may 
be,  Harvey,  on  his  return  home  after  five  years  at  Padua 
(a3t.  24),  soon  embarked  upon  a  long  course  of  dissections 
and  vivisections,  one  result  of  which  was  that  his  lectures 
at  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians,  begun  in  his  thirty- 
eighth  year,  revealed  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  anatomy 
of  sixty  kinds  of  animals  —  to  say  nothing  of  a  perfect 
familiarity  with  that  of  the  human  body.  As  to  the  motive 
that  impelled  him  to  such  indefatigable  research,  he  shall 
speak  for  himself.  "  At  length,  and  by  using  greater  and  daily 

1  The  quotation  is  from  Dr.  Osier's  Harveian  Oration  of  1906.     The  elate 
given  is  presumably  a  misprint.     Harvey  began  to  lecture  in  1616. 


WILLIAM    HARVEY.    M.D. 
Engraved  l>y  S.  Freeman. 


To  face  f.  214. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      215 

diligence,  having  frequent  recourse  to  vivisections,  employing 
a  variety  of  animals  for  the  purpose,  ...  I  thought  .  .  .  that 
I  had  discovered  what  I  so  much  desired,  with  the  motion  and 
the  use  of  the  heart  and  arteries."  In  his  Lumleian  Lectures, 
begun  in  1616,  Harvey  opened  that  long  battle  with  scientific 
error,  and  tireless  championship  of  his  hard-won  truth,  which 
mainly  occupied  the  rest  of  his  eager  life.  It  was  twelve  years 
later  that  he  published  his  book  to  the  world. 

In  Descartes  we  have  an  interesting  example  of  intellectual 
crisis  :  from  the  day  in  his  twenty-fourth  year  when  he  de- 
liberately chose  his  own  path,  his  whole  mental  activities  were 
confined  to  a  predetermined  course  and  method.  It  was  in 
1619,  when  Descartes,  who  two  years  before,  desirous  of  travel, 
had  joined  the  force  of  Prince  Maurice  at  Buda,  was  in  winter 
quarters  at  Neuburg.  From  the  age  of  eighteen  he  had  been 
specially  drawn  to  the  study  of  mathematics,  wherein  he  found 
the  logical  symmetry  and  clearness  as  yet  lacking  in  the  more 
concrete  departments  of  science.  "  I  determined  one  day  to 
study  within  myself,  and  to  employ  all  my  mental  force  in 
choosing  the  paths  which  I  ought  to  follow.  ...  I  remained 
all  day  alone,  shut  in  a  warm  room,  where  I  was  at  perfect 
leisure  to  occupy  myself  with  my  own  thoughts."  The  result 
of  this  deliberation  was  a  firm  decision  to  discard  all  traditional 
preconceptions  and  to  build  on  the  sure  foundation  of  incon- 
trovertible fact.  Also — and  here  the  influence  of  his  Jesuitical 
training  is  clearly  seen — he  resolved  to  maintain  a  distinct 
barrier  between  the  departments  of  science  and  faith.  With 
regard  to  mathematics,  he  said  long  afterwards  :  "  I  was 
astonished  that  foundations  so  strong  and  solid  should  have 
had  no  loftier  superstructure  raised  on  them."  The  object 
he  now  set  before  himself  was  the  extension  of  mathematical 
method,  its  clearness  in  demonstration,  completeness  in  analysis, 
precision  in  measurement,  to  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  in 
general.  But  how  was  the  complexity  of  nature  to  be  so 
simplified  as  to  admit  of  this  ?  A  mode  of  quantitative  ex- 
pression at  once  infinitely  diversible  and  continuous  was  evidently 
needed ;  and,  three  years  later,  during  a  phase  of  curious 
exaltation,  a  "  marvellous  discovery  "  of  the  key  to  this  problem 


216  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

dawned  upon  his  mind.  Matter  he  regarded  as  synonymous 
with  extension — "  Give  me  extension  and  motion,  and  I  will 
construct  the  world."  Mathematics,  he  thought,  could  best 
be  treated  symbolically,  as  in  algebra ;  and  quantities  were 
most  clearly  and  simply  expressed  by  lines.  The  need  of 
complicated  figures  was  largely  obviated  by  algebraical  expression 
of  their  purport.  By  the  combination  of  algebraical  and  geo- 
metrical method  (analytical  geometry),  Descartes  therefore 
found  himself  in  a  position  to  solve  many  new  and  otherwise 
insoluble  problems,  and  believed  it  possible  to  express  all  the 
relations  of  motion  and  extension,  that  is  (for  him),  all  factors 
of  the  phenomenal  universe.  All  natural  processes,  from  the 
simplest  to  the  most  complex,  were  to  be  conceived  as  mechani- 
cally -  determined  throughout,  consequently  as  measurable, 
that  is,  reducible  to  the  mathematical  laws  of  figure  and  motion.1 
Such  was  the  fundamental  conception,  to  the  development  of 
which  Descartes  henceforth  devoted  his  life.  What,  however, 
he  largely  failed  to  realise,  was  that  the  content  of  Science  must 
be  of  empirical  origin.  Scepticism,  for  him,  had  done  its 
work  when  it  had  examined  his  metaphysical  "  first  principles  " 
— God,  the  thinking  subject,  extension,  motion,  clear  perception 
as  the  criterion  of  truth,  etc., — and  failed  to  refute  them. 
Starting  from  these  first  principles,  he  believed  it  possible 
to  deduce  the  scheme  of  the  universe  a  priori,  with,  perhaps, 
occasional  recourse  to  experiment  or  observation,  much  as  a 
schoolboy  may  turn  up  the  "  answers  "  in  his  sum-book,  by 
way  of  making  sure  he  is  on  the  right  track. 

If  ever  there  were  a  born  thinker — a  thinker  by  instinct — it 
was  Spinoza.  He  lived  not  merely  for,  but  in  and  by,  philosophy,: 
his  purpose,  his  philosophy,  and  his  life,  are  one  and  the  same 
thing.  To  understand  the  first,  we  must  consider  the  influences 
which  contributed  to  the  determination  of  the  second  and  the 
third.  To  begin  with,  Spinoza  was  a  Jew  who  disliked  Judaism, 
who,  from  the  first,  was  out  of  sympathy  with  its  formalism, 
and  the  hard,  limited  anthropomorphism  which  it  has  bequeathed 
to  Christendom.  There  you  have  the  root-motive  of  his  philoso- 
phising :  to  think  his  way  out  of  prison,  and  to  build  a  new 

1  "  All  my  physics  is  nothing  else  than  geometry  "  (Descartes). 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      217 

Palace  of  Thought  for  his  own  soul  and  for  the  souls  of  other 
free  men.  He  began,  of  course,  as  a  theologian,  studying 
the  Talmud  in  his  teens  under  Rabbi  Morteira ;  also  the  works 
of  the  Jewish  philosophers,  who,  from  the  thirteenth  to  the 
fifteenth  century,  "  strove  by  free  critical  interpretation  of 
Scripture  to  systematise  theology  on  an  Aristotelian  basis." 
"  In  the  tenets  and  questionings  of  these  men  he  found," 
says  Sir  F.  Pollock,  "  much  more  than  his  teachers  expected 
him  to  find,  or  were  themselves  capable  of  finding."  How 
should  he  not,  since  they  offered  a  way  of  escape  1  Maimonides, 
for  example,  taught  that  the  "  will  and  the  wisdom  of  God  are 
inseparable  ;  that  He  co-exists  with  creation  as  its  cause  in 
actu,  not  precedes  it  as  its  cause  in  potentid ;  that  perfect 
intellect  knows  not  good  and  evil,  only  true  and  false,  and  that 
the  conceptions  of  design  and  final  cause  have  no  application 
except  as  to  things  created  in  time."  Chasdai  Creskas  (a 
writer  expressly  quoted  in  one  of  Spinoza's  letters)  taught 
"  that  God  is  determined  to  creation  by  love — at  once  a  necessity 
of  His  nature  and  an  act  of  will ;  that  human  volitions  are 
determined  by  motives  as  much  as  anything  is  determined," 
that  free  actions  are  only  free  in  the  sense  of  not  being  externally 
constrained — was,  in  short,  a  thoroughgoing  determinist. 
If  he  also  conceded  the  necessity  of  a  special  revelation  of 
God's  nature,  that  was  an  interpolation  so  obviously  at  variance 
with  the  tenour  of  his  argument  that  young  Spinoza  would  not 
fail  to  perceive  the  incongruity.  It  is  with  books  as  with  food, 
we  assimilate  only  what  agrees  with  our  constitution.  It  was 
possibly  by  Francis  van  den  Ende,  a  physician  of  rationalistic 
proclivities,  who  taught  him  Latin  and  (Pollock  thinks)  the 
elements  of  physical  science,  that  young  Spinoza  was  introduced 
to  the  works  of  Giordano  Bruno  and  Descartes.  The  former 
he  must  have  found  congenial  and  peculiarly  stimulating  ;  that 
he  closely  studied  the  works  of  the  latter  is  proved  no  less  by 
internal  evidence  of  its  influence,  than  by  the  fact  that  his  first 
published  work — the  only  one  to  which  he  ever  set  his  name — 
was  an  admirable  summary  of  the  "  Principles  of  Philosophy," 
which  appeared  in  his  thirty-first  year.  Bruno  not  only  used 
the  words  "  mode  "  and  "  attribute,"  which  are  so  prominent 


2i8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

in  Spinoza's  technical  vocabulary,  but  maintained  that  the 
First  Principle  is  infinite  in  all  its  attributes,  and  that  one  of 
these  is  extension.  With  regard  to  Descartes,  though  Sir  F. 
Pollock  may  be  right  in  maintaining  that  Spinoza  was  never 
a  Cartesian,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  learnt  much  from  his 
predecessor,  and  embodied  many  of  his  conclusions — scientific, 
however,  mostly,  rather  than  metaphysical — in  his  own  works. 
That  Spinoza,  a  thoroughgoing  monist,  rejected  the  Cartesian 
severance  of  spirit  and  matter,  is  a  point  of  great  psychological 
interest.  The  root-explanation  is  to  be  sought  in  the  contrasted 
characters  of  the  two  men.  Descartes  was  a  timid  man,  with  a 
perfect  horror  of  embroiling  himself  with  the  Church.  Although 
professing  to  base  his  philosophy  on  the  principle  of  universal 
doubt,  he  explicitly  exempted  matters  of  faith,  and,  practically, 
that  also  of  the  existence  of  the  Deity — his  proof  of  which 
is  conceived  in  the  very  spirit  of  scholasticism,  and  has  convinced 
only  those  who  have  desired  conviction.  I  do  not  impugn  the 
sincerity  of  his  intention  :  he  was  more  sophistical  than  he 
realised,  and  I  do  not  believe  that  he  was  quite  easy  in  his  mind 
as  to  the  validity  of  his  own  theistic  argument.  There  is  an 
excess  of  emphasis,  a  tendency  to  reiteration,  which  I  find 
suspicious.  He  once  let  slip  in  a  letter  the  remark  that  God 
might  be  identified  with  the  order  of  Nature.  He  certainly 
quibbled  about  the  movement  of  the  earth  and  about  transub- 
stantiation.  It  was  necessary  to  keep  in  with  the  Jesuits.  The 
role  of  the  Cartesian  Deity  is  to  stand  with  one  foot  on  each 
side  of  the  gulf  that  divides  two  incommensurables — thinking 
substance  and  extended  substance,  soul  and  body.  This  kind  of 
unity  might  be  good  enough  for  a  philosophical  mathematician, 
but  not  for  a  philosopher  sans  phrase.  Stimulated  by  the 
failure  of  Descartes,  Spinoza,  fresh  from  the  reading  of  Maimon- 
ides,  fearlessly  adopted  the  only  possible  solution  of  the  problem. 
Thought  and  extension  should  not  be  independent  substances, 
but  parallel  attributes  of  the  one  infinite  substance,  the  God 
who  "  co-exists  with  creation,  as  its  cause  in  actu,  not  precedes 
it  as  its  cause  in  potentid."  His  God  was  explicitly  and  un- 
compromisingly what  Descartes'  God  was,  at  most,  covertly 
and  inferentially — one  with  the  order  of  Nature,  albeit  experience 


RENE1    DESCARTES. 
From  a  block  lent  by  Messrs.  Ur.  Rider  <5-  Son,  Ltd. 


Ta/act/>.  218. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      219 

reveals  to  us  only  two  of  the  innumerable  attributes  which 
reason  postulates  for  the  Absolute. 

But  in  thus  outlining  the  ultimate  reaction  of  Spinoza's 
mind  to  Cartesianism,  we  are  to  some  extent  anticipating  the 
course  of  events.  Before  he  could  philosophise  on  his  own 
account,  he  had  to  come  to  terms  with  the  questions  raised  by 
his  theological  training.  It  is  true  that  the  leading  ideas 
of  his  system  are  said  to  have  been  submitted  to  de  Vries  and 
other  friends,  in  outline,  in  his  thirty-first  year  (1663),  but  the 
Ethics  was  not  completed  until  he  was  about  forty-two,  while 
the  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus  was  published  four  years 
earlier,  and  was  no  doubt  the  fruit  of  long  research  and  medi- 
tation. It  is  a  powerful  plea  for  liberty  of  thought  and  speech, 
"  in  which  he  plunges  into  an  investigation  of  the  nature  of 
prophecy,  the  principle  of  Scriptural  investigation,  and  the  true 
provinces  of  theology  and  philosophy,  anticipating  with 
wonderful  grasp  and  insight  almost  every  principle  and  not  a 
few  of  the  results  of  the  school  of  historical  criticism  which 
has  arisen  within  the  last  two  or  three  generations."  In  it 
Spinoza  "  appeals  from  the  Churches  to  the  State,  as  representing 
the  worldly  common-sense  of  the  lay  mind." 

The  jealousy  with  which  Spinoza  guarded  his  intellectual 
freedom  is  well  shown  by  his  refusal  (set.  30)  of  the  flattering 
offer  of  the  Chair  of  Philosophy  at  Heidelberg.  He  had  no  time 
for  teaching  ;  moreover,  something  had  been  said  about  not 
disturbing  the  established  religion,  and  he  could  not  tell  within 
what  bounds  he  ought  to  confine  himself  in  order  to  escape 
any  such  charge.  When  the  Ethics  was  completed,  Spinoza 
visited  Amsterdam  with  a  view  to  arranging  for  its  publication. 
But  rumours  of  its  "  atheistical "  tendency  had  gone  abroad  ; 
the  venture  seemed  inopportune,  and  Spinoza,  confident  of 
ultimate  recognition,  calmly  resigned  himself  to  delay.  The 
Ethics  appeared,  posthumously,  with  other  works,  and 
was  promptly  interdicted  by  the  States  of  Holland  and  West 
Friesland.  I  will  conclude  this  brief  account  of  the  develop- 
ment of  Spinozism  by  summarising  Sir  F.  Pollock's  estimate 
of  the  sources  of  its  several  elements.  Taking  his  Jewish  theo- 
logical training  and  environment  ( 1)  as  the  starting-point,  we  trace 


220  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  pantheist  and  mystical  element  (2)  to  medieval  Jewish  philo- 
sophers and  to  Bruno.  The  Scientific  element  (3)  is  largely 
derived  from  Descartes,  and  the  monistic  position  (4)  by  reaction 
from  the  same  source.  The  idea  of  natural  law,  particularly 
in  psychology  (5)  remains,  and  is,  in  Pollock's  opinion,  "the 
most  independent  work  of  Spinoza's  genius,"  although  we  have 
seen  it  clearly  suggested  in  the  quotation  from  Chasdai  Creskas. 
"  His  account  of  the  passions,  as  worked  out  in  the  Ethics, 
is  his  masterpiece,  still  unsurpassed."  But  it  would  be  an 
absurd  error  to  conclude,  that,  because  we  can  identify  some  of 
the  stones  which  went  to  the  building  of  his  House  of  Thought, 
Spinoza  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere  eclectic,  not  a  man  of  creative 
intellect.  The  unity  that  combines  the  diverse  elements  of 
Spinozism  is  not  mechanical,  but  spiritual.  His  theory  of  the 
Absolute  has  revolutionised  theology,  a  word  which  I  use 
deliberately  and  in  its  widest  significance.1 

It  is  exceptional,  even  among  philosophers,  to  find  such 
unity  and  consistency  of  aim  as  characterise  the  life  of  Spinoza. 
Among  scientific  discoveries,  like  Newton — for  only  the  most 
insular  of  Britons  could  pretend  that  Newton  was  a  philosopher 
— such  unity  as  we  do  find  will,  in  most  cases,  be  that  of  mental 
attitude  rather  than  formal  achievement.  Still  it  is  true  that 
in  the  lives  of  most  scientific  discoverers  there  is,  not  only  some 
central  interest,  but  some  specific  aim,  culminating  in  a  central 
and  peculiarly  characteristic  discovery.  From  this  point  of 
view,  Newton's  work  in  optics  and  in  mathematics,  important 
as  it  was  in  itself,  will  always  be  secondary  to  his  formulation 
of  the  theory  of  gravitation,  to  which,  genetically,  it  in  fact 
served  as  introduction  and  training.  Newton  entered  Trinity 
in  1660  (set.  17),  knowing  little  of  science.  In  Cambridge, 
"  the  real  birthplace  of  his  genius,"  all  his  great  discoveries 
were  made,  and  there  the  ensuing  thirty-five  years  of  his  life, 
up  to  the  date  of  his  appointment  to  the  Mint,  were  almost 
exclusively  spent.  Like  so  many  men  of  genius — Napoleon, 
Scott,  Goethe,  Leibnitz,  Bacon,  Descartes,  for  example — 
Newton  seems  to  have  been  instinctively  drawn  towards 

1  That  is,  as  practically  equivalent  with   "  ontology,"  a  title  perhaps 
destined  to  supersede  it. 


SPINOZA. 
From  the  stafite  by  Marc  Antocolsky, 


To  face  p.  220. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      221 

occultism  at  various  periods   of  his  life.     I  have  mentioned 
how,  as  an  undergraduate,  he  was  led  to  the  study  of  mathe- 
matics by  the  desire  to  test  the  claims  of  astrology.     We  may 
note,  in  passing,  that  Newton  is  said  by  Dr.  Law  to  have  set  up 
furnaces  in  his  youth  and  spent  several  months  in  quest  of  the 
"  philosopher's    tincture."     Copious    extracts    from    Behmen's 
works  were  found  among  his  papers,   and  there  exist  many 
sheets  of  his  own  extracts  from  the  occult  works  of  Flammel 
and  Yworth.    What    concerns    us  now,  however,  is  his  acci- 
dental discovery  of  his  very  extraordinary  gift  for  mathematics. 
As  a  testimony  to  his  facility  in  this  department,  I  will  cite 
the  story  told  of  two  problems  sent  in  1697  by  Bernouilli  to  the 
chief  mathematicians  of  Europe.     Leibnitz  is  said  to  have 
asked  for  an  extension  of   the  six  months  allowed  for  their 
solution,  to  a  year.     Newton  solved  both  on  the  day  of  receipt, 
and  his  anonymous  solution  was  recognised  as  his  by  Bernouilli, 
"  tanquam   ex  ungue   leonem."    Newton   obtained    his   B.A. 
degree  in  1665  (set.  23),  and  in  due  course  a  Junior  Fellowship, 
the  M.A.,  and  a  Senior  Fellowship,  finally,  the  Lucasian  Pro- 
fessorship in  Mathematics.    The  year  following  his  graduation 
(1666)  is  a  notable  one  :    in  it  he  established   the   different 
refrangibility   of    light    rays,    and    formulated    his    Binomial 
Theorem  and  method  of  Fluxions.    In  taking  up  the  subject 
of  optics,  he  was  following  the  example  of  many  contemporary 
investigators  :   its  problems  were  in  the  air,  so  to  speak.    But, 
as   bearing   on   his    greatest    achievement,   the    mathematical 
discovery  concerns  us  more  closely.    The  problem  was  to  find 
a  general  quantitative   method  of   expressing  various  curves, 
and  estimating  the  areas  enclosed  by  them,  and  also  the  con- 
tents of  spherical  bodies.     Tentative  work  had  been  done  on 
these  lines  by  Kepler,  Cavalieri,  and  Descartes,  while  Roberval 
and  Fermat  had  made  a  near  approach  to  success.     At  the  out- 
set of  his  mathematical  study  Newton  had  read  a  book  on 
The  Arithmetic  of  Infinites,  by  Dr.  Wallis,  an  Oxford  geometrician. 
Wallis  found  that  if   the  equations  of  a  number  of   curves 
were  arranged  in  order  of  simplicity,  beginning  with  that  of 
a  straight  line,  the    equation   of    a    circle  was  intermediate 
between  the  first  and  second  terms,  that  is,  between   that 


222  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  a  straight  line  and  a  parabola.  He  considered  that  if  the 
areas  of  curves  were  similarly  arranged,  that  of  the  circle 
would  be  in  like  manner  intermediate  between  the  first  and 
second  terms  of  such  a  series.  The  results  obtained  by 
Wallis  were,  however,  of  limited  application,  and  Newton, 
pursuing  the  investigation,  obtained  a  general  method  of  inter- 
polating terms  in  a  given  series.  In  applying  the  same  process 
to  the  ordinates  of  curves,  "  he  discovered  the  general  method 
of  reducing  radical  quantities  composed  of  several  terms  into 
infinite  series,  and  was  thus  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  cele- 
brated Binomial  Theorem."  Henceforth  he  discarded  Wallis's 
principle  of  interpolation,  and  employed  his  new  method  for 
the  rectification  of  curves  and  the  determination  of  surfaces 
and  solids,  and  the  positions  of  centres  of  gravity.  Further, 
"  he  discovered  the  general  principle  of  deducing  the  areas  of 
curves  from  the  ordinate  by  considering  the  area  as  a  nascent 
quantity  increasing  in  proportion  to  the  length  of  the  ordinate 
and  supposing  the  abscissa  to  increase  uniformly  with  the 
time.  To  the  velocities  with  which  every  line,  surface,  or 
solid  is  generated,  Newton  gave  the  name  of  '  Fluxions.'  .  .  . 
By  thus  regarding  lines  as  generated  by  the  motion  of  points, 
surfaces  by  the  motion  of  lines,  and  solids  by  the  motion  of 
surfaces,  and  by  considering  that  the  ordinates,  abscissae,  etc., 
of  curves  thus  formed  vary  according  to  a  general  law  depend- 
ing on  the  equation  of  the  curve,  he  deduces  from  this  equation 
the  velocities  with  which  these  quantities  are  generated  ;  and 
by  the  rules  of  infinite  series  he  obtains  the  ultimate  value 
of  the  quantity  required."  The  treatise  in  which  Newton 
described  this  important  discovery  was  not  published  until 
45  years  after  it  had  been  made.1  This  reticence  may  be 
largely  attributed  to  his  hatred  of  controversy,  and  the  sore- 
ness consequent  upon  the  extreme  virulence  of  the  criticisms 
encountered  by  his  optical  discoveries.  It  may  also  be  partly 
due  to  the  fact  that  his  mathematical  researches  were 
undertaken  in  great  measure  as  a  means  to  astronomical 
investigations,  and  the  less  valued,  therefore,  on  their  own 

1  The  principle  is  described  in  the  first  edition  of  the  Principia  (1687), 
but  the  notation  is  withheld. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     223 

account.  For  it  seems  clear  that  at  the  very  time  when  he  thus 
grappled  with  and  conquered  the  problem  of  precise  measure- 
ment of  curves,  spheres,  etc.,  and  the  determination  of  centres 
of  gravity,  his  mind  was  brooding  over  the  vast  cosmic  enigma 
for  whose  solution  just  such  measurements  were  required. 
There  is  here  every  appearance  of  deliberate  purpose,  and  1 
trust  the  reader  has  noted  the  inevitability  of  the  sequence  of 
events  by  which,  hitherto,  Newton's  mind  has  been  lured  into 
its  appropriate  path.  We  are  still  in  the  year  1666 — Newton's 
twenty-fourth.  Owing  to  an  outbreak  of  plague  he  removed 
for  a  time  from  Cambridge  to  Woolsthorpe,  and  in  a  garden  there 
the  tree  was  long  pointed  out  from  which  that  memorable 
apple  is  supposed  to  have  dropped.  Newton,  sitting  there, 
was  reflecting  on  the  power  which  attracts  bodies  towards  the 
earth's  centre.  He  considered  whether  it  might  extend  to  the 
moon  and  retain  her  in  her  orbit ;  then  he  thought  of  the  planets 
as  retained  by  a  similar  power  in  their  course  round  the  sun, 
which  course  he  then  erroneously  supposed  to  be  circular. 
Kepler,  in  his  Harmony  of  the  World  (1619),  had  already 
surmised  that  some  power  resides  in  the  sun,  governing  the 
motions  of  the  planets  in  orbits,  and  "  even  went  so  far  as  to 
suggest  that  this  power  diminished  as  the  square  of  the  dis- 
tance of  the  body  on  which  it  was  exerted  ;  but  immediately 
rejects  this  law,  and  prefers  that  of  the  simple  distances."  J 
Bouillaud,  in  his  Astronomica  Philolaica  (1645),  says,  re 
attraction  as  a  cause  of  planetary  motions,  that  "  if  it  existed 
it  would  decrease  as  the  square  of  the  distance."  Bouilli 
(1666) — the  very  year  we  are  dealing  with — attributed  to  a 
common  cause  the  lunar  and  terrestrial  movements  and  those 
of  the  Jovian  satellites.  And  in  March  of  this  year  Dr.  R.  Hook 
had  read  to  the  Royal  Society  an  account  of  his  investigations 
of  the  weight  of  bodies  at  different  distances  from  the  centre 
of  the  earth.  Newton,  perhaps  on  the  strength  of  Kepler's 
hint,  perhaps  entirely  on  his  own  account,  believed  that  the 
force  of  gravity  would  prove  to  vary  inversely  as  the  square 
of  the  distance.  But  on  calculation,  on  the  basis  of  a  supposed 

1  Kepler  speaks  of  gravity  as  a  mutual  corporeal  attraction   between 
similar  bodies,  and  maintains  that  the  tides  are  due  to  the  moon's  attraction. 


224  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

circular  orbit  of  the  moon,  and  an  erroneous  estimate  of  the 
earth's  diameter,  he  could  not  make  the  hypothetical  force 
of  gravity  correspond  with  known  facts  as  to  the  earth's  pull 
on  her  satellite.  He  therefore  abandoned  the  problem  and 
returned  to  his  optical  researches. 

Thirteen  years  later  (1679)  his  rival  Hook  (still  hot  on  the 
trail)  supplied  one  of  the  missing  links  by  proving  that  projec- 
tiles acting  under  a  force  varying  inversely  as  the  square  of  the 
distance  from  its  source  will  move  in  elliptical  orbits.  Newton 
thereupon  demonstrated  that  a  planet  acting  under  such  a 
force  will  describe  an  elliptical  orbit,  in  one  of  whose  foci  the 
attractive  force  resides.  Three  years  later  the  final  clue  was 
obtained  in  the  form  of  a  corrected  estimate  (supplied  by  Picard) 
of  the  earth's  diameter.  Newton  resumed  his  long-abandoned 
calculation  ;  and  so  intense  was  his  excitement  on  finding  that 
the  expected  result  was  likely  to  be  obtained,  that  he  was  com- 
pelled to  relinquish  the  task  to  a  friend.  "  The  force  of  gravity 
which  regulated  the  fall  of  bodies  at  the  earth's  surface,  when 
diminished  as  the  square  of  the  moon's  distance  from  the  earth, 
was  found  to  be  almost  exactly  equal  to  the  centrifugal  force 
of  the  moon  as  deduced  from  her  observed  distance  and 
velocity." 

Another  three  years  brought  Newton's  long  task  to  a  close. 
His  Principia  was  completed  in  1685,  and  presented  to  the 
Royal  Society  in  1686 — twenty  years  after  the  conception  of 
its  fundamental  proposition,  that  "  every  particle  of  matter 
is  attracted  by,  or  gravitates  to,  every  other  particle,  with  a 
force  inversely  proportional  to  the  squares  of  their  distances." 

One  of  the  supreme  tasks  of  the  new  science  of  Critical 
Psychology  will  be  the  deliberate  revaluation  of  current  con- 
clusions as  to  the  comparative  merits  of  the  world's  greatest 
men.  It  is  useless  to  plead  that  "  comparisons  are  odious," 
because  we  must  have  standards  of  value,  and  it  is  from  such 
sources  alone  that  they  can  ultimately  be  derived.  Compari- 
sons— waiving  hypocrisy — are  keenly  relished  by  all,  except 
those  whose  deficiencies  are  thereby  revealed.  This  by  way 
of  preface  to  the  remark  that  it  is  by  no  means  necessarily  the 
greatest  men  who  achieve  the  greatest  (even  posthumous) 


SIR    ISAAC    NEWTON. 


Engraved  by  K.  Scrit'cnfivm  the  original  picture  by  I  'anderbank  in  tke  fossessio 

of  the  Royal  Society. 


To  fact  p.  224. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      225 

renown.  An  ideal  purpose  may  realise  itself  concentratively, 
as  with  Spinoza,  or  dispersively,  as  with  our  next  subject, 
Leibnitz.  Of  two  men  differing  only  in  this  respect,  the  fame  of 
the  first  will  necessarily  outstrip  and  surpass  that  of  the  second, 
although  it  in  no  way  follows  that  there  will  be  a  corresponding 
difference  in  the  worth  of  their  respective  achievements. 

Spinoza's  wise  economy  of  his  meagre  physical  resources 
was  practically  forced  upon  him  by  ill-health.  His  magni- 
ficent work  was  impossible  on  any  other  terms.  It  was  for 
the  sake  of  the  work,  not  for  what  it  might  bring  him  of  wealth 
or  renown,  that  he  lived  so  ascetically  and  so  withdrawn  from 
the  world.  The  motives  of  Leibnitz  were  not  less  pure,  but 
his  method  was  the  very  reverse.  It  seems  to  have  been  a 
matter  of  complete  indifference  to  him  what  particular  task 
he  worked  upon  :  to  each  and  all  he  brought  the  same  lofty 
spirit,  the  same  unwearied  zeal.  His  America  was  everywhere 
where  he  found  work  to  be  done.  This  generosity  was  of  course 
exploited  by  worldlings,  who  know  too  well  the  art  of  making 
genius  their  tool.  Intellectually,  Leibnitz  was  at  least  the  equal 
of  Spinoza.  Schwegler  says  that,  after  Aristotle,  he  was  the 
polymath  of  the  greatest  genius  who  ever  lived.  But  for  every 
man  of  culture  who  knows  or  cares  anything  about  him  or  his 
work,  there  are  fifty  who  can  prattle  about  the  Ethics  or  the 
Tractatus.  Yet  through  all  the  multifarious  interests  and 
activities  of  Leibnitz,  legal,  mathematical,  ecclesiastical,  political, 
and  metaphysical,  run  the  two  interwoven  strands  of  a  single 
undeviating  purpose.  If  Spinoza  lived  in  his  philosophy,  so, 
conversely,  Leibnitz  philosophised  in  his  life.  He  was  not  more 
a  philosopher  in  composing  the  Thfodicfe  than  in  seeking 
common  ground  for  Catholic  and  Protestant,  advocating  the 
use  of  the  vernacular  for  scientific  literature,  trying  to  avert 
from  Holland  the  destructive  ambition  of  Louis  xrv.,  projecting 
his  Calculus  Philosophicus,  or  compiling  the  Annals  of  the  House 
of  Brunswick.  "  His  mind  was  ...  a  focus  in  which  the 
scattered  tendencies  and  aspirations  of  his  age  united."  The 
twofold  object  which  he  kept  ever  before  him  was  "  to  pene- 
trate, on  the  one  side,  to  the  very  root  and  origin  of  existing 
ideas,  and,  on  the  other,  to  apply  them  to  practical  ends." 
15 


226  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Of  the  studious  habits  of  his  boyhood  I  have  already  spoken  : 
a  point  of  some  interest  is  his  early  admiration  for  Lord  Bacon, 
whose  influence  may  have  determined  his  choice  of  the  Law 
as  his  main  subject  at  Leipsic  University ;  and  is  also  clearly 
seen  in  his  political  and  religious  aims.  He  was,  however,  a 
discriminating  admirer  :  from  first  to  last  he  refused  to  lend 
himself  to  the  depreciation  of  Aristotle  and  the  ancient  philo- 
sophers in  general,  which  had  in  his  day  become  the  mental 
pose  of  all  progressives,  a  fashion  in  which  Bacon  had  certainly 
showed  no  lack  of  zeal.  Leibnitz,  for  all  his  acuteness,  inclined 
rather  to  appreciation  than  to  censure.  By  the  time  Leibnitz 
reached  the  age  of  twenty  (viz.,  in  1666)  he  had  gained  the 
degrees  of  Master  of  Philosophy  at  Leipsic  and  Doctor  of  Law 
at  Altdorf  University,  had  refused  a  professorship  (shrinking 
from  the  defects  and  narrowness  then  characteristic  of  German 
University  life),  had  in  a  dissertation,  De  Prindpio  Individui, 
already  revealed  the  germ  of  his  Monadology,  and  in  his  theses, 
Specimen  DifficuUatis  in  Jure  and  Specimen  Certitudinis  in 
Jure,  had  indicated  the  two  great  objects  of  the  modern  science 
of  Law  :  "  a  philosophical  inquiry  into  the  principles  of  Right, 
and  a  systematic  arrangement  of  the  matter  handed  down  to 
us."  He  had  the  old  philosophy  as  well  as  the  new  (Bacon, 
Descartes,  etc.)  at  his  finger-tips ;  had  a  sound  legal  training, 
unbounded  aspirations,  deep  but  enlightened  faith,  and  a 
determination  to  extend  to  the  utmost  his  already  consider- 
able proficiency  in  the  higher  mathematics.  In  a  treatise, 
De  Arte  Combinatorid,  he  had,  in  fact,  shown  the  dependence 
of  scientific  progress  on  mathematical  precision  of  method, 
advancing  the  symbolism  of  algebra  as  a  type  of  such  precision. 

At  Niirnberg,  where  he  now  spent  a  year,  Leibnitz  joined  a 
branch  of  the  Rosicrucians.  As  secretary,  he  had  to  register 
the  experiments  made  by  members,  and  thus  added  to  his  equip- 
ment the  elements  of  chemical  knowledge.  But  the  next 
great  landmark  in  his  career  is  his  meeting  at  Frankfurt  (1667, 
aet.  21)  with  Baron  von  Boineburg,  a  diplomatist  in  the  service 
of  the  Catholic  Archbishop  of  Mainz,  which  led  to  the  crystallisa- 
tion of  practical  aims  as  essential  to  the  expression  of  his  genius 
as  the  vast  theoretical  aims  already  conceived.  For  Boineburg 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      227 

and  Archbishop  Schonborn,  from  the  Catholic  side,  were  work- 
ing for  a  religious  concordat,  a  work  in  which  Leibnitz,  from 
the  Protestant  side,  enthusiastically  concurred.  Though  un- 
able to  accept  the  current  theology  of  the  Mother  Church, 
he  always  maintained  that  he  belonged,  spiritually,  to  the 
unseen  Catholic  community.  At  Paris,  in  1672  (set.  26), 
Leibnitz  met  Huygens,  by  whose  aid  and  encouragement  he 
made  great  strides  towards  mastery  of  the  higher  mathematics. 
He  was,  in  fact,  on  the  eve  of  an  important  discovery — that  of 
the  infinitesimal  calculus,  already  attained,  but  not  revealed, 
by  Newton.  Boineburg  and  (soon  after)  the  Archbishop 
died  in  1673,  and  Leibnitz,  thus  freed,  returned  to  Paris  and 
occupied  himself  with  the  measurement  of  curves  and  areas. 
By  the  end  of  1675  he  had  fixed  the  notation  of  the  integral 
and  differential  calculus,  and  a  year  later  (ast.  30)  had  for- 
mulated most  of  its  rules.  In  pursuit  of  this  discovery  Leibnitz 
worked  on  different  lines  from  Newton's,  looking  first,  not 
for  the  finite  quantity  which  was  the  ratio  of  two  infinitely 
small  ones,  but  for  the  finite  sum  of  an  infinite  series  of  such 
infinitesimals.  In  working  out  his  integral  calculus,  as  well  as 
the  differential  which  immediately  followed,  Leibnitz  did  not, 
like  Newton,  at  first  content  himself  with  an  approximate 
result.  "  He  sought  fundamental  principles,  and  did  not  rest 
until  he  had  found  a  general  result  and  fixed  it  by  a  clear  trans- 
parent notation."  Consequently  his  discovery  was  eagerly 
taken  up  by  James  and  John  Bernouilli  and  others,  and  proved 
more  fruitful  than  that  of  his  English  rival.  In  1676  (set.  30), 
Leibnitz,  after  a  week  spent  in  London,  visited  Spinoza  at 
the  Hague,  and  there  saw  and  perhaps  made  extracts  from  the 
MS.  of  the  Ethics.  This  brings  us  to  the  last  point  I  shall 
now  deal  with,  namely,  the  influence  of  Descartes  and  Spinoza 
on  his  philosophical  development.  In  both  he  found  much  to 
admire,  and  much  which,  ultimately,  he  rejected.  As  against 
the  former,  he  became  convinced  that  neither  extension  nor 
motion  could  be  regarded  as  the  essence  of  corporeal  things, 
any  more  than  thought,  strictly  so  called,  of  spiritual.  He 
pointed  out  that  the  quality  of  inertia,  inadequately  recognised 
by  Descartes,  indicated  a  substantial  nature  lacking  to  mere 


228  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

extension,  proved  that  bodies  had  active  essence.  He  did 
not  accept  even  extension  with  the  naivete  of  Spinoza,  but 
regarded  it  (in  anticipation  of  Kant)  as  an  abstraction  necessi- 
tated by  the  grossness  of  our  senses.  His  unit  of  reality  was 
the  "  monad,"  a  mathematical  point,  having  in  lieu  of 
extension  an  infinite  background  of  ideal  potentialities.1  All 
monads  he  endowed  with  some  degree  of  "  perception "  ; 
all  reflected  in  some  degree,  however  inadequate,  the  univer- 
sality and  unity  of  God.  Further,  Leibnitz  differed  from 
Spinoza  in  regard  to  the  rejection  of  final  cause  and  purpose 
from  the  Absolute.  The  causal  nexus  was  for  him  but  an 
appearance  ;  external  events  are  not  mechanically  but  ideally 
determined,  and  subserve  ideal  ends.  The  quest  of  these  ideal 
ends  (postulated  by  his  "  Law  of  Sufficient  Reason  ")  was  the 
real  task  of  philosophy,  complementary  to  the  scientific  task, 
so  greatly  facilitated  by  his  own  achievements,  of  summarising 
mathematically  the  observed  uniformities  of  the  external 
world.  Here,  then,  we  have  the  twofold  aspect  of  his  intrin- 
sically single  purpose  :  the  advancement  in  all  possible  ways 
of  the  new  scientific  methods,  and  the  correction  of  their 
tendency  towards  a  falsely-mechanical  conception  of  reality 
by  reinstatement  of  the  idealism  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 

The  main  purpose  of  a  philosopher  is  apt  to  be  a  fruit  of 
slow  ripening,  because  an  essential  part  of  his  equipment  is  an 
omnivorous  appetite  for  knowledge,  which  has  to  be  satiated 
before  he  can  begin  his  proper  task,  or  even  adequately  conceive 
its  nature  and  scope.  He  must, in  fact,  be  a  scholar  before  he  can 
set  up  as  a  teacher  ;  and  with  every  generation  the  magnitude 
of  this  preliminary  task  and  the  danger  of  its  swamping  his 
individuality  increases.  Hence  the  probability,  deplored  by 
Nietzsche,  "that  the  philosopher  will  grow  tired  even  as  a  learner, 
or  will  attach  himself  somewhere  and  '  specialise  '  ;  so  that  he 
will  no  longer  attain  to  his  elevation,  that  is  to  say,  to  his  super- 
spection,  his  circumspection,  and  his  despection.  Or  he  gets 
aloft  too  late,  when  the  best  of  his  maturity  is  past,  ...  so 
that  his  view  ...  is  no  longer  of  much  importance."  In 

1 1  surmise  here  an  unacknowledged  debt  to  the  occult  philosophy  of  his 
Rosicrucian  associates. 


LEIBNITZ. 
From  a  Painting; 


Tafaccf.  228. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      229 

describing  the  vocation  of  Kant,  I  have  already  mentioned  the 
fact  that  he  began  largely  as  a  physicist  rather  than  a  meta- 
physician, lecturing  and  writing  on  mathematics,  astronomy, 
geography,  in  addition  to  logic  and  philosophy.  This  encyclo- 
paedic role  was  of  long  duration ;  only  after  his  thirty-eighth 
year  (1762)  he  began  to  devote  himself  more  and  more  exclusively 
to  the  true  task  of  his  life.  Between  1760  and  1765 — that  is, 
almost  midway  in  his  career — Kant  seems  to  have  passed  through 
a  sort  of  crisis  ;  and  hereabout  I  should  be  inclined  to  date  the 
crystallisation  of  his  (at  first)  mainly  negative  or  critical  purpose. 
The  study  of  Hume,  Locke,  and  other  sceptics  had  begun  to 
unsettle  his  confidence  in  the  soundness  of  the  traditional 
metaphysic,  what  one  might  call  the  neo-scholasticism  of  Wolf 
in  particular.  The  effect  of  Hume's  rather  crude  realism  upon 
the  subtler  German  intelligence  of  Kant  must  have  been  in  part 
liberating  and  in  part  provocative.  Consider  the  following 
passages  :  (1)  "  'Tis  not  our  body  we  perceive  when  we  regard 
our  limbs  and  members,  but  certain  impressions  which  enter  by 
the  senses  ;  so  that  the  ascribing  a  real  and  corporeal  existence 
to  these  impressions,  or  to  their  objects,  is  an  act  of  the  mind, 
etc."  (2)  "  What  we  call  a  mind  is  nothing  but  a  heap  or  collec- 
tion of  different  perceptions,  united  together  by  certain  rela- 
tions." That  Hume  altogether  underrated  and  completely 
failed  to  give  any  coherent  account  of  the  "  act  of  the  mind  " 
referred  to  in  the  first  passage,  is  hardly  surprising  in  one  who 
could  speak  of  that  mind  as  a  "  heap  or  collection,  etc."  To 
throw  light  on  this  obscurity  began  to  be  the  absorbing  task  of 
the  "  great  Chinaman  of  Konigsberg,"  a  task  in  which  he  found 
full  scope  for  the  iconoclastic  tendencies  of  his  essentially 
nonconforming  temperament,1  and,  at  the  same  time,  congenial 
opportunities  for  the  sly  interpolation  of  a  saving  element  of 
transcendentalism.  Kant  knew  well  that  the  mind  of  a  man 
neither  begins  as  tabula  rasa,  nor  ends  as  a  scrap-heap,  and  this 
much  at  least  he  has  proved  beyond  fear  of  ref citation.  But  in 
answering  the  question  whether  there  is  not  more  in  the  mind 

"  Every  man  his  own  doctor,  every  man  his  own  lawyer,  every  man  his 
own  priest — that  was  the  ideal  of  Kant.  .  .  .  Sacerdotalism  was  abhorrent 
to  him.  During  his  manhood  he  never  entered  a  church  door." 


230  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

than  has  been  given  in  experience,  it  certainly  makes  a  difference 
whether,  with  Kant,  we  confine  ourselves  to  the  experience  of 
the  individual,  or,  in  modern  fashion,  include  in  our  survey 
that  of  the  whole  race,  and  what  lies  behind  it.  From  the  latter 
point  of  view  it  is  an  arguable  position  that  the  vaunted  apriority 
of  space,  time,  and  the  categories  of  the  understanding  are,  after 
all,  but  psychical  correlates  of  some  part  of  the  cerebral  structure, 
fundamental  predispositions  of  that  embodied  racial  and  sub- 
racial  experience  which  we  call  the  brain. 

Kant  was  fifty-seven  years  old  when,  in  1781,  he  published 
his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  the  product,  he  tells  us,  of  twelve 
years'  reflection,  but  written  in  four  or  five  months.     He  had 
thus  completed  the  negative  part  of  his  purpose  :   the  assign- 
ment of  the  boundaries  of  human  reason,  its  limitation  to  the 
knowledge  of  appearance,  plus  the  indeterminate  inference  of  a 
reality  of  some  sort  beyond.     It  was,  for  a  man  of  his  tempera- 
ment and  history,  a  foregone  conclusion  that  he  would  not 
permanently  rest  content  with  such  purely  negative  conclusions. 
After  all  he  was  a  German,  and  a  man  of  genius.     The  ideal 
world  must  somehow  be  reinstated,  for  he  believed  in  its  existence. 
Ideal  conceptions  were  in  his  opinion  generated  by  the  necessity 
which  compels  the  reason  to  complete  the  unity  of  a  given 
synthesis,  its  inability  to  rest  in  finite  data.     Thus  the  Soul,  the 
Universe,  and  God  are  the  postulated  unities  of  consciousness, 
external  phenomena,  and  existence  in  general,  and,  as  such, 
legitimate  enough.    In  his  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason, 
published  seven  years  after  the  work  just  referred  to,  Kant 
develops  the  ethical  consequences  of  this  view.    Man  as  a  part 
of  nature  is  subject  to  necessity  ;  man  considered  as  a  spiritual 
being  is,  or  should  be,  free  and  self-determined.     Our  desires 
must  be  subject  to  the  "  controlling  consciousness  of  member- 
ship in  an  ideal  community  of  rational  beings  "  (W.  Wallace). 
We  must  assume  our  freedom  in  order  to  achieve  it.     "  Never 
act  unless  you  can  also  will  your  principle  of  action  into  the 
rank  of  universal  law."     So  acting,  for  the  good  of  all  men,  we 
may  assume  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  the  existence  of 
God  as  guarantees  of  progress  towards,  and  ultimate  attain- 
ment of,  the  ideal  of  moral  perfection.     It  is  to  be  noted  that  the 


From  a  block  lent  by  Messrs.  »'.  Ki<{er&>  Son,  Ltd. 


To  face  p.  230. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       231 

God  of  Kant  is  not  anthropomorphic  but  post-Spinozan,  the 
central  unity  of  universal  law,  the  Infinite  Ideal — the  Absolute. 
The    prevailing    note    in    Kant's    temperament    might    be 
described  as  a  well-balanced  tendency  towards  negation.     In- 
dividualist, republican,  celibate,  he  was  in  all  things  moderate, 
and  in  many  abstemious.     For  him  the  key  to  mastery  in  life 
and  thought  is  found  in  a  stern  self -limitation.     It  is  a  formula 
that  works,  but  it  is  not  the  best  formula.     Hegel,  on  the 
contrary,  stands  for  self-fulfilment,  and  despite  the  superficial 
air  of  pedagogism  and  formality  that  we  find  in  him,  was  really 
of  a  much  more  impulsive  nature.     Compare  the  fulness  and 
sanity  of  his  career,  as  citizen,  husband,  churchman,  and  pro- 
fessor, with  the  non-committal  attitude  of  Kant.     Compare,  too, 
the  extravagance  of  his  early  views — his  Jacobinism,  his  out- 
spoken  repudiation   of    Judaism,    and   Christianity — with   the 
moderate,  but  comparatively  unprogressive,  spirit  of  his  pre- 
decessor.   Hegel's  purely  negative  phase,  if  acute,  was  of  short 
duration ;    his  was  essentially  a  constructive  mind.     The  true 
dawn  of  his  (specific)  purpose  dates  from  about  the  time  of  his 
break  with  Schelling  in  1803  (aet.  33),  and  the  publication,  soon 
afterwards,  of  his  Phenomenology  of  Spirit.     A  deep  student  of 
Spinoza  and  Kant,  he  was  dissatisfied  with  the  objective  bias 
of  the  one  and  the  agnosticism  of  the  other.     Spirit  must,  he 
thought,  be  conceived  rather  as  subject  than  as  substance  ; 
while  the  conclusion  of  Kant,  that  intelligence  is  itself  unin- 
telligible, was  one  which  he  could  not  and  would  not  accept. 
For  the  gulf  fixed  by  Kant  between  reality  and  appearance  was, 
for  Hegel,  a  gulf  between  the  true  self  and  its  objective  mani- 
festations.    A  further  stimulus  to  the  formulation  of  his  purpose 
was,  no  doubt,  his  growing  distaste  for  the  facile  intuitionalism 
of  Schelling.     With  many  of  Schelling's  results  he  had  found 
himself  in  agreement ;   what  he  felt  the  lack  of  was  any  serious 
attempt  at   a   logical    deduction    of    those    results.     Another 
important  factor  in  determining  the  form  of  his  constructive 
aim  was  the  strong  admiration  he  had  conceived  for  the  Hellenic 
ideal  of  corporate  socio-political  unity.     He  recognised  what  was 
true  in  Protestant  and  rationalist  individualism — thus  he  spoke 
admiringly  of  the  French  as  freed  and  invigorated  by  "  the  bath 


232  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  the  Revolution  " — but  this  modern  ideal  of  liberty  had  some- 
how to  be  reconciled  to  the  classic  ideal  of  the  State  as  embodi- 
ment and  realisation  of  the  collective  will  of  its  members.  In 
the  conception  of  Spirit  as  universal  self-consciousness,  realising 
itself  by  a  self-negating  and  self-defining  process  of  individua- 
tion,  he  at  last  found  what  he  believed  to  be  the  true  solution  of 
these  various  problems.  This  process  is  essentially  a  logical, 
not  a  mechanical  one  :  for  Hegel  the  categories  of  the  under- 
standing are  "  not  instruments  which  the  mind  uses,  but  elements 
in  a  whole,  or  stages  in  a  process,  which,  in  its  unity,  the  mind 
is  "  (Caird).  Hegel's  conception  of  Reality  as  self-conscious- 
ness, or  Spirit,  is  a  revolutionary  one,  because  it  regards  every 
finite  or  determinate  existence  as  essentially  self-contradictory, 
and  therefore  involves  the  transcendence  of  the  "  either,  or  " 
logic  which  held,  and,  to  a  very  great  extent,  still  holds  un- 
questioned sway.  In  Hegel  the  long-simmering  revolt  of 
modernism  against  the  despotism  of  Aristotle  culminated  in  a 
repudiation  of  its  bed-rock  foundation — the  supreme  validity 
of  the  Law  of  Contradiction.  To  put  it  bluntly,  Hegel  declared 
that  not  only  is  it  untrue  that  a  thing  cannot  at  once  both  be  and 
not  be,  but  that  every  particular  thing  at  once  is  and  is  not. 
And  to  this  audacious  and  momentous  conclusion  he  was  forced, 
not  (as  cocksure  positivists  rashly  and  impudently  assume)  by 
mere  phantasy  or  perverse  fatuity,  but  by  rigid  adherence  to  the 
stern  logic  of  actuality.  Freedom  and  Law,  for  example,  are 
completely  antithetical  conceptions — mutually  exclusive  from 
the  Aristotelian  point  of  view.  Yet  in  the  State,  "  the  embodi- 
ment of  rational  freedom,"  they  may  co-exist  as  harmonised 
factors  of  a  comprehensive  unity.  Further,  the  true  path  to 
the  anarchic  ideal  traverses  a  phase  of  constantly-increasing 
stringency  and  particularity  of  legislation.  It  is  doubtless 
the  case  that  Hegel  was  put  on  the  scent  of  his  dialectic  by  the 
section  of  Kant's  Critique  in  which  he  discusses  the  Antithetic 
of  Pure  Reason.  For  he  says  in  his  Logic,  "  The  true  and 
positive  meaning  of  the  antinomies  is  this  :  that  every 
actual  thing  involves  a  co-existence  of  opposed  elements.  .  .  . 
To  comprehend  an  object  is  equivalent  to  being  con- 
scious of  it  as  a  concrete  unity  of  opposed  determina- 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       233 

tions." x  Hegel's  express  purpose  (negatively  considered) 
was,  in  fact,  to  get  beyond  Kant,  to  break  down  the  barrier 
he  had  set  up  between  reality  and  appearance,  between 
thought  and  its  object,  between  intelligence  and  the  intel- 
ligible world,  between  the  spirit  and  itself.  If,  reader,  you 
have  by  any  chance  a  philosopher  among  your  acquaint- 
ance, I  advise  you  to  keep  a  watchful  eye  upon  his 
doings  between  his  fortieth  and  fiftieth  years.  Then,  if  ever, 
he  is  likely  to  be  dangerous — then  is  the  climacteric  period  for 
his  lust  of  power,  his  determination  to  dictate  to  the  universe. 
From  his  forty-second  to  forty-sixth  year,  Hegel  was  engaged 
upon  his  Logic — his  original  or  "  greater  "  Logic,  that  is — whose 
aim  is  "  the  systematic  reorganisation  of  the  commonwealth 
of  thought.  ...  It  attempts  the  hard  task  of  reconstructing, 
step  by  step,  into  totality  the  fragments  of  the  organism  of 
intelligence."  z  This  remains  upon  the  whole  the  chef  tfceuvre 
of  his  maturity.  One  point  remains  to  be  noted.  It  was  in  the 
central  moral  principle  of  Christianity,  the  principle  of  self- 
realisation  through  self-sacrifice,  that  Hegel  had  found  that 
movement  through  negation  to  affirmation,  through  conflict  to 
unity,  which,  as  the  distinctive  feature  of  Spirit,  he  made  the 
keystone  of  his  philosophy.  To  isolate  the  central  doctrine  of 
a  religion  is  in  a  sense  to  transcend  that  religion  as  a  system  of 
dogma  and  symbol,  now  become  superfluous.  But  rather  than 
identify  himself  with  the  apostles  of  "  raisonnement,"  the  "  ring- 
leaders of  the  hosts  of  shallowness,"  Hegel,  arch-revolutionist  as 
he  knew  himself  to  be,  preferred  to  emphasise  the  constructive 
side  of  his  aim  by  accepting  the  superficially  ambiguous  position 
of  a  champion  of  orthodoxy — always,  however,  of  orthodoxy 
as  he  conceived  and  interpreted  it.  Hence  much  mis- 
understanding ;  hence,  too,  no  doubt,  the  furious  invective 
and  the  denunciation  of  his  alleged  "  charlatanry "  by 
Schopenhauer.  Hegel,  for  his  part,  was  no  kid-glove 
pugilist :  in  controversy,  if  not  bitter,  he  was  at  least  ruthless, 
an  intellectual  forerunner  of  the  new  German  school  of 

1  "  There  is  absolutely  nothing  whatever  in  which  we  cannot  and  must  not 
point  to  contradictions." — Hegel,  Logic,  89,  "  Determinate  Being  "  (Wallace). 
z  W.  Wallace. 


234  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

"blood  and  iron,"  already  initiated  by  the  example  of  Frederic 
the  Great. 

But  the  last  thing  a  philosopher  truly  dreads  is  misunder- 
standing. The  old  fox,  Hegel,  knew  well  the  indispensable 
value  of  the  mask  :  his  decorous  bourgeois  exterior  signified 
his  possession  of  not  a  little  of  what  he  himself  has  eulogised 
as  the  cunning  of  the  divine  reason. 

Although  he  lacked  the  universality  and  profundity  of  the 
born  philosopher,  Darwin,  as  a  scientific  generaliser  of  a  high 
order,  has  decided  philosophical  affinities.  Hence  perhaps,  in 
part,  the  discursiveness  of  his  mind  in  youth,  and  the  slow 
development  of  the  specific  aim,  which,  once  conceived,  he  pur- 
sued with  such  tenacity.  The  three  years  which  he  spent  at 
Cambridge  —  his  twentieth  to  his  twenty-second  —  though 
largely  devoted  to  sport  and  frivolity,  were  not  wholly  wasted. 
Introduced  by  his  friend  Fox  to  Prof.  Henslow,  the  botanist, 
who  made  it  his  custom  to  welcome  at  his  house,  every  Friday 
evening,  undergraduates  of  scientific  bent,  Darwin  not  only 
became  a  regular  attendant  at  these  soirees,  but  qualified  for 
the  title  of  "  the  man  who  walks  with  Henslow."  This  intimacy 
with  a  seasoned  enthusiast  at  such  a  critical  period  of  his  own 
mental  development  no  doubt  went  far  to  reveal  to  Darwin  his 
kindred  potentialities.  "  My  friendship  with  Prof.  Henslow," 
he  says  himself,  "  influenced  my  whole  career  more  than  any 
other  circumstance."  It  was  at  Cambridge,  too,  that  Darwin 
first  read  Humboldt's  Personal  Narrative,  and  Herschel's 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Natural  Philosophy,  which  stirred 
up  in  him  "  a  burning  zeal  to  add  even  the  most  humble  con- 
tribution to  the  noble  structure  of  natural  science."  Here, 
then,  we  have  the  birth  of  a  general,  not  yet  of  the  specific 
purpose.  "  No  one  of  a  dozen  books,"  Darwin  states  with 
emphasis,  "  influenced  me  nearly  as  much  as  these  two."  The 
practical  part  of  his  scientific  pursuits,  in  his  undergraduate 
years,  consisted  mainly  in  the  ardent  and  indiscriminate  col- 
lection of  beetles,  which,  unfortunately  perhaps,  he  did  not 
dissect,1  contenting  himself  with  ascertaining  the  name  of 

1  In    later    years    he    felt    himself    hampered    by  the    lack    of    manual 
skill.     Possibly  its  possession  might  have  hampered  him  even  more. 


HEGEL. 
Front  a  Painting. 


To/act/-.  ?34. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       235 

every  specimen.  After  obtaining  his  "  poll  "  degree,  Darwin 
remained  at  Cambridge  for  another  two  terms,  taking 
up  there,  by  Henslow's  advice,  the  study  of  geology. 
And  in  August  of  the  same  year  (1831)  Darwin  (aet.  22) 
availed  himself  of  the  opportunity  of  accompanying  Sedg- 
wick  in  a  geological  tour  of  North  Wales,  from  which 
he  derived  much  advantage.  On  the  heels  of  this  ex- 
perience came  the  offer  from  Henslow  of  his  good  offices 
in  securing  for  Darwin  the  post  of  volunteer  naturalist 
to  the  Beagle,  commissioned,  under  Captain  Fitzroy,  to 
complete  the  survey  of  Patagonia  and  Tierra  del  Fuego, 
to  survey  the  shores  of  Chile,  Peru,  and  some  islands  of 
the  Pacific,  and  to  carry  a  chain  of  chronometrical 
measurements  round  the  world.  Darwin,  eager  to  accept, 
was  constrained  by  his  father's  opposition  to  decline  the 
offer ;  but  ultimately  this  difficulty  was  overcome,  and 
he  sailed  on  27th  December  1831,  and  was  absent  nearly 
five  years.  During  the  whole  of  this  time  he  remained 
absorbed  in  the  study  of  the  geology  of  the  places  visited, 
the  collection  and  dissection  of  animals  and  marine 
specimens,  and  the  keeping  of  a  detailed  journal  of  his 
observations.  His  ambition  was  at  last  fairly  awakened  ;  his 
enthusiasm  for  science  gradually  preponderated  over  every 
other  taste  ;  and,  though  working  mainly  for  the  love  of  in- 
vestigation, he  began  to  cherish  dreams  of  earning  the  approba- 
tion of  such  men  as  Lyell  and  Hooker.  "  I  have  never,"  he 
declares,  "  turned  one  inch  out  of  my  way  to  gain  fame," 
meaning  popular  approbation.  Of  this  voyage  on  the  Beagle 
Darwin  says  truly  that  it  was  by  far  the  most  momentous  event 
in  his  life,  and  determined  his  whole  career.  By  imposing  the 
obligation  of  steady  work  it  converted  him  from  a  mere  dil- 
ettante into  an  expert,  at  the  same  time  preserving  him  from 
the  danger  of  narrow  specialism  by  the  breadth  of  experience 
it  conferred.  It  was  probably  during  this  voyage  that  Darwin's 
thoughts  began  to  dwell  upon  the  great  problem  of  evolution. 
For  he  has  recorded  that  when,  in  July  of  1837,  less  than  a  year 
after  his  return,  he  opened  his  first  note-book  for  facts  bearing 
on  the  origin  of  species,  he  had  long  been  reflecting  on  the 


236  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

subject.1  Ten  or  twelve  years  earlier  he  had  heard  Dr.  Grant 
at  Edinburgh  eulogise  Lamarck's  evolutionary  theory,  and  he 
says  of  this  that  "  the  hearing,  rather  early  in  life,  such  views 
maintained  and  praised  may  have  favoured  my  upholding 
them  under  a  different  form."  Still  earlier,  he  had  read  with 
strong  admiration  the  Zoonomia  of  his  own  grandfather.  Can 
interest  in  a  given  subject  be  inherited  ?  It  is,  at  any  rate, 
undeniable  that  such  seemingly  trivial  influences  as  the  reading 
of  a  book  or  the  memory  of  a  conversation  may  have  a  critical 
effect  upon  life  or  character.  Such  germs  of  thought  may  lie 
dormant  for  years  ;  then,  under  favourable  conditions,  may 
suddenly  take  on  vigorous  growth  and  activity.  The  reading 
of  Lyell's  Principles  of  Geology  on  the  Beagle  had  probably 
proved  a  revelation  with  regard  to  the  immensity  of  the  effects 
produced,  in  the  course  of  ages,  by  the  accumulation  of  im- 
perceptible changes.2  Certain  facts — e.g.,  the  character  of  the 
American  fossil  Mammifers,  and  the  distribution  of  the  organ- 
isms on  the  Galapagos  islands — had  struck  him  at  the  time  of 
observation  as  suggesting  the  modifiability  of  species.  Wliile 
preparing  his  journal  for  publication  he  came  across  so  many 
of  these  facts,  that  he  determined  to  investigate  the  subject. 
Hence  the  opening  of  the  notebook  referred  to  above,  and  the 
beginning  of  the  long  and  toilsome  research,  which,  twenty-two 
years  later,  resulted  in  the  publication  of  the  Origin  of  Species. 
At  present  (1837,  an.  set.  28-29),  Darwin  had  arrived  merely 
at  the  stage  of  vague  dissatisfaction  with  the  current  view  that 
species  were  permanent  and  immutable.  His  purpose  was 
becoming  specific  :  he  had  got  far  beyond  the  stage  of  mere 
desire  to  do  something  for  the  cause  of  Science ;  but  he  barely 
saw  his  way  as  yet  even  to  the  negative  side  of  his  aim.  "  I 
worked  on  true  Baconian  lines,"  he  says,  "  and  without  any 
theory  collected  facts  on  a  wholesale  scale,  more  especially  with 
respect  to  domesticated  productions."  He  soon  saw  that 

1  "  When  I  was  on  board   the  Beagle,  I   believed  in  the  permanence  of 
species,  but,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  vague  doubts  occasionally  flitted 
across  my  mind.  .  .  .  The  subject  haunted  me"  (Darwin). 

2  There  is  an   obvious  analogy   between   the  anti-catastrophic   doctrine 
introduced  to  geology  by  Lyell  and  Darwin's  faith  in  the  omnipotent  role  of 
imperceptible  variations  in  the  biological  sphere. 


CHARLES    DARWIN. 

Reproduced  by  permission  nfthe  Linna-an  Society,  from  a  painting  fry 
the  Hon.  J.  Collier. 


To  face  p.  236. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       237 

selection  was  the  key  to  man's  success  in  modifying  species, 
but  could  not  see  how  this  principle  could  apply  to  Nature. 
But  in  October  1838  (fifteen  months  after  the  beginning  of  this 
inquiry),  Darwin  chanced  to  read  Malthus's  work  on  Popula- 
tion. "  Being  well  acquainted  with  the  struggle  for  existence 
which  everywhere  goes  on,"  he  says,  "  it  at  once  struck  me  that 
under  these  circumstances  favourable  variations  would  tend 
to  be  preserved,  unfavourable  ones  to  be  destroyed.  The 
result  of  this  would  be  the  formation  of  new  species.  Here, 
then,  I  had  at  last  got  a  theory  to  work  on."  The  theory  in 
question  is,  of  course,  that  now  known  as  "  Natural  Selection," 
but  it  should  be  noted  that  the  validity  of  this  hypothesis  rests 
largely  on  the  assumption  that  the  variations  in  question  will 
permanently  "  breed  true,"  that  there  will  be  no  ultimate 
tendency  to  revert  to  the  original  type.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
this  is  probably  only  the  case  with  regard  to  the  comparatively 
small  proportion  of  variations  which  are  of  a  qualitative  nature. 
The  vast  majority  of  variations,  including  all  those  produced 
by  man  (upon  which  Darwin  so  largely  based  his  theory),  are, 
according  to  the  view  recently  advanced  by  de  Vries,  merely 
quantitative — limited,  that  is,  to  the  increase  or  decrease  of 
elements  already  available.  These  "  fluctuating "  as  dis- 
tinguished from  true  "  mutational "  variations,  are  always  the 
result  of  nourishment  (that  is,  environment),  and  are  exceed- 
ingly unstable.  It  is  impossible  by  the  accumulation  of  such 
unstable  accidental  variations  to  explain  the  origin  of  any  new 
species.  Nevertheless,  an  important  role  may  be  played  by 
natural  selection  in  determining  the  survival  or  extinction  of 
species  produced  by  the  true  mutational  variations,  whose 
occurrence  we  must  admit.  In  1842,  the  year  in  which  Darwin, 
now  married,  retired  from  London  to  the  seclusion  of  Down, 
he  at  length  wrote  a  short  pencil  abstract  of  his  theory,  the  first 
fruit  of  his  five  years'  research.1  The  next  step  in  its  formula- 
tion was  the  addition  of  what  he  called  the  law  of  Divergence 
of  Character,  which  came  to  him  one  day  as  he  walked  on  the 
road  near  Down.  To  account  for  the  augmentation  of  the 
minute  differences  of  variation  into  the  clear-cut  distinctions 
1  Thirty-five  pages  only.  Two  years  later  it  was  expanded  to  230  pages. 


238  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  species,  he  argued  that  the  most  divergent,  the  most  special- 
ised varieties,  would  be  just  those  upon  the  average  best  qualified 
"  to  seize  on  many  and  widely  diversified  places  in  the  polity  of 
Nature,  and  so  enabled  to  increase  in  numbers."  The  inter- 
mediate more  conservative  forms  (so  to  speak)  would  tend  to 
drop  out  and  become  extinct,  leaving  wide  gaps  between  the 
surviving  highly-differentiated  groups.  Darwin  was  now 
"  corresponding  on  problems  in  geology,  geography,  distri- 
bution, and  classification ;  at  the  same  time  collecting  facts 
on  such  varied  points  as  the  stripes  on  horses'  legs,  the  floating 
of  seeds,  the  breeding  of  pigeons,  the  form  of  bees'  cells,"  and 
innumerable  others.  In  1846  he  entered  upon  a  laborious 
investigation  of  the  living  and  extinct  species  of  barnacles, 
which  occupied  much  of  the  ensuing  eight  years,  and,  incident- 
ally, gave  him  the  biological  training  and  the  insight  into 
classification  which  he  had  previously  in  some  degree  lacked. 
Ultimately,  in  1856  (nineteen  years  from  the  opening  of  that 
first  notebook),  on  the  urgent  advice  of  Lyell,  he  began  to  set 
forth  his  theory,  but  on  a  scale  three  or  four  times  as  full  as  that 
of  the  Origin.  Two  years  later,  when  some  ten  chapters  had 
been  written,  came,  like  a  bolt  from  the  blue,  a  MS.  essay 
from  Wallace  "  On  the  Tendency  of  Varieties  to  depart  in- 
definitely from  the  Original  Type."  Darwin,  much  distressed, 
honourably  placed  himself  in  the  hands  of  Lyell  and  Hooker. 
Wallace's  essay,  extracts  from  Darwin's  draft  MS.  of  1844,  and 
a  letter  to  Asa  Grey  (1857),  explaining  his  theory,  were  jointly 
communicated  to  the  Linnasan  Society.  Intense  interest  was 
excited,  and,  a  month  later,  Darwin  set  vigorously  to  work  upon 
the  Origin,  which  was  completed  in  thirteen  months.  One 
further  point  must  be  noted — the  deliberate  postponement  of 
that  application  of  his  theory  to  human  origins  which  no  doubt 
formed  a  part  of  his  purpose.  In  Chapter  VI.  of  the  Origin 
Darwin  clearly  implies  his  belief  in  human  evolution.  "  I  can 
hardly  doubt  that  all  vertebrate  animals  have  descended  by 
ordinary  generation  from  an  ancient  prototype  of  which  we 
know  nothing,  furnished  with  a  floating  apparatus  and  a  swim- 
bladder."  It  was  not  until  twelve  years  later  (1871)  that,  by 
the  publication  of  the  Descent  of  Man,  the  full  significance  of 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       239 

Darwin's  revolutionary  conception  was  finally  revealed.  For 
theologians  and  their  allies  (e.g.  Prof.  Sedgwick,  one  of  his 
bitterest  opponents)  the  sting  of  it  lay  in  that,  granted  variation 
and  the  hereditary  stability  of  its  products,  it  showed  how 
structures  of  exquisitely  purposive  design,  such  as  the  human 
eye,  might  be  accounted  for  on  purely  mechanical  principles. 
But  Darwin  had  his  own  misgivings,  which  he  was  too  candid 
to  minimise  or  conceal.  "  The  sight  of  a  feather  in  a  peacock's 
tail,"  he  confessed,  "  whenever  I  gaze  at  it,  makes  me  sick  ! 
Yet,  for  the  life  of  me,  I  cannot  see  any  difficulty  in  Natural 
Selection  producing  the  most  exquisite  structures,"  he  persists, 
"  if  such  structures  can  be  arrived  at  by  gradation."  Darwin's 
faith  in  the  power  of  the  infinitely  little,  as  shown  in,  e.g.,  his 
work  on  coral  reefs,  on  earth-worms,  and  on  fertilisation,  is  one 
of  the  most  profound  intuitions  of  his  genius.  The  other  main 
factors  were  (1)  sympathy,  (2)  a  unique  faculty  of  observation, 
and  (3)  the  central  thread  of  his  purpose — a  growing  desire  to 
understand,  that  is,  to  generalise,  the  results  of  his  observation. 
The  fact  that  Darwin,  as  a  man  of  means,  had  abundant  leisure, 
which,  by  the  debility  which  set  in  after  his  return  from  the 
Beagle  expedition,  he  was  prevented  from  squandering  in  social 
diversions — even  if  he  had  been  so  disposed — must  also  be 
accounted  in  some  degree  favourable  to  the  formation  of 
methodical  habits  of  work.  Of  course,  both  wealth  and  sickness 
might,  in  a  less  aspiring  nature,  equally  have  served  as  excuses 
for  doing  nothing  at  all ! 

IV.  Ethico-Religious  Type. — It  is  one  of  the  main  triumphs 
of  the  higher  criticism,  and  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  its  funda- 
mentally constructive  tendency,  that,  reading  between  the 
lines  of  the  Gospel  narratives,  it  has  found  indications  or  at 
least  suggestions  of  development  in  the  character,  as  also  in 
the  point  of  view,  of  their  central  figure.  The  presence  of  these 
developmental  features  constitutes  a  valuable  indirect  evidence 
of  the  historicity  of  Jesus,  though  hardly  of  the  supernatural 
claims  made  by  him  or  on  his  behalf.  And  the  value  of  this 
evidence  is  rather  increased  than  otherwise  by  the  fact  that  its 
presence  is  obviously  due  more  to  oversight  than  intention  on 
the  part  of  the  writers.  The  intention  being  to  depict  one 


240  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

superior  to  all  need  of  moral  or  intellectual  progress,  the  facts 
would  seem  to  have  been  too  strong  for  the  Gospel-makers, 
and  to  have  escaped  suppression  unawares.  The  growth  of 
myth  is  so  rapid  and  inevitable — compare  the  modern  instance 
of  Bahaism,  for  example — that  there  is  no  need  to  impute 
deliberate  falsification  to  the  writers  or  compilers  :  it  was 
probably  the  controlling  influence  of  the  Messianic  idea  on 
minds  unable  to  accept  the  apparent  failure  of  their  hero, 
minds  forced,  therefore,  to  adopt  the  (for  them)  only  con- 
ceivable alternative  of  an  expectation  of  supernatural 
triumph,  which  insensibly  issued  in  a  distortion  of  the  facts. 
But  assuming,  as  I  think  we  safely  may,  the  historicity  of 
the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels,  we  have  still  to  recognise  the 
possibility  that  his  literary  personality  is  in  some  degree 
a  composite  product*  Professor  W.  B.  Smith  has,  for 
example,  adduced  many  reasons  for  suspecting  the  existence 
of  a  Pre-Christian  Jesus  Cult,  the  existence  for  some  in- 
definite period  among  the  Jews  of  the  Dispersion,  of  the 
cult  of  a  divine  person  whose  name  or  title  was  Jesus.1  The 
followers  of  the  New  Testament  Jesus  were,  on  this  hypothesis, 
but  the  originators  of  a  new  sect  or  heresy  in  an  already  ancient 
worship  of  a  divine  person  bearing  the  same  name,  while  the 
New  Testament  documents  themselves  "  bear  evidence  of  being 
the  writings  of  a  party  that  attempted  to  effect  a  compromise 
between  the  followers  of  the  old  Jesus  cult  and  the  Christian 
schismatics."  Hence  the  repeated  occurrence,  in  the  Gospels 
and  the  Acts,  of  the  phrase,  ra  irepi  rov  'Irjo-ov,  "  the  things 
concerning  the  Jesus,"  which  certainly  reads  like  a  stereotyped 
formula.  In  view  of  such  perplexing  possibilities,  the  examina- 
tion of  the  Gospel  records  for  evidence  of  a  process  of  develop- 
ment in  the  opinions  and  aims  of  their  hero  assumes  a  new 
importance  and  interest.  Only  a  life-history  that  has  an  in- 
telligible psychology  fulfils,  in  these  days,  the  first  condition 
of  acceptance.  Assuming  that  the  traces  of  such  a  psychology 
can  be  found  in  the  Gospels,  the  forcing  of  a  historic  figure  into 
a  pre-existent  mythical  framework  of  supernatural  function 

1  Cf.  "  Was  there  a  Pre-Christian  Jesus  Cult  ?  "  by  A.  Ransom.      Literary 
Quid'.,  1st  Feb.  1908. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      241 

and  incident1  would  explain  all  the  chief  difficulties  of  the 
problem. 

It  seems  clear  that  Jesus  was  born  into  an  environment 
seething  with  new  ideas  and  revolutionary  conceptions.  It  was 
a  time  of  strong  nationalist  aspirations,  signified  by  such  move- 
ments as  that  of  the  Zelotes  and  Sicarii  who  killed  violators  of 
the  Law,  of  the  Thaumaturges  or  wonder-workers,  and  of  the 
followers  of  Judas  the  Gaulonite  or  Galilean.  This  Judas, 
whom  Jesus  may  have  met,  was  a  fanatical  opponent  of  the 
census,  the  basis  of  that  civil  taxation  so  obnoxious  to  theocratic 
ideas.  His  Messianic  zeal  brought  him  into  conflict  with  the 
authorities,  and  his  consequent  ruin  may,  Renan  suggests, 
have  served  as  a  warning  to  Jesus  to  steer  clear  of  political 
embroilments.  Rabbis  or  teachers  appeared  on  all  sides,  each 
with  some  distinctive  doctrine,  more  or  less  Utopian,  more  or 
less  communistic,  embodied  in  maxims  such  as  are  to  be  found 
in  the  Talmud.  John  the  Baptist  was  one  such  teacher  ;  Jesus 
was  another,  "  one  Rabbi  more,  and  around  him  some  young 
men,  eager  to  hear  him."  Jesus  may  well  have  found  inspira- 
tion in  the  aphorisms  of  Hillel,  uttered  fifty  years  before,  and 
imbued  with  a  spirit  not  unlike  his  own.  "  By  his  poverty,  so 
meekly  endured,  by  the  sweetness  of  his  character,  by  his 
opposition  to  priests  and  hypocrites,  Hillel  was  the  true  master 
of  Jesus,  if  indeed  it  may  be  permitted  to  speak  of  a  master  in 
connection  with  so  high  an  originality  as  his."  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  Jesus  was  well  versed  in  that  body  of  arbitrary 
theocratic  ordinances  known  as  the  Law,  as  well  as  in  the 
abundant  oral  precepts  and  maxims  current  in  the  synagogues 
of  his  day.  Among  the  prophets,  Isaiah  would  seem  to  have 
been  a  special  favourite,  while  many  of  his  high  hopes  and 
apocalyptic  visions  are  traceable  to  the  influence  of  the  unknown 
philosopher,  who,  somewhere  about  168  B.C.,  in  composing  the 
Book  of  Daniel,  "  for  the  first  time  dared  to  see  in  the  march 
of  the  world  and  the  succession  of  Empires  only  a  purpose 

1  An  ancient  Nassene  (Gnostic)  psalm  of  non-Christian  and  probably  ante- 
Christian  origin,  "  represents  Jesus,  the  Son,  resting  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  and  begging  to  be  sent  to  suffering,  erring  men  "  (Arthur  Ransom, 
loc.  cit.  sup.). 

16 


242  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

subordinate  to  the  destinies  of  the  Jewish  people."  We  may 
note  in  passing  the  important  fact,  rightly  emphasised  by 
Estlin  Carpenter,  that  the  "  Son  of  Man  "  in  Daniel's  vision, 
like  the  Lion,  the  Bear,  the  Leopard,  which  represented  the 
great  Gentile  nations,  is  to  be  understood  not  as  a  mere  person, 
but  as  the  symbol  of  a  nation — that  purified  Israel  to  whom 
is  to  be  assigned  a  perpetual  and  universal  supremacy.  If, 
which  is  very  doubtful,  Jesus,  and  not  some  late  compilers 
(influenced  perhaps  by  Gnostic  tendencies),  really  applied  to 
himself  the  title  "  Son  of  Man,"  it  must  therefore  have  been  in 
misconception  of  the  true  purport  of  Daniel's  vision.  To  the 
influence  of  its  unknown  writer  Jesus  probably  owed  the  germ 
of  his  highest  and  most  spiritual  conception,  that  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  or  everlasting  reign  of  the  Saints.  The  germ,  I  say, 
because  upon  the  whole,  in  spite  of  certain  lapses  into  the  earlier 
and  cruder  form,  the  Kingdom,  as  Jesus  conceived,  and,  with 
many  beautiful  similitudes,  foreshadowed  it,  is  not  a  super- 
naturally  initiated,  apocalyptic  revolution,  but  the  slow  permea- 
tion of  society  by  a  new  spirit  of  love  towards  God  and  charity 
towards  one's  fellows.  "  In  the  later  periods  of  his  life,"  says 
Kenan,  "  Jesus  believed  that  this  reign  would  be  realised  in  a 
material  form  by  a  sudden  renovation  of  the  world.  But 
doubtless  this  was  not  his  first  idea.  '  The  Kingdom  of  God 
is  within  you,'  said  he  to  those  who  sought  with  subtlety  for 
external  signs.  The  realistic  conception  of  the  Divine  advent 
was  but  a  cloud,  a  transient  error,  which  his  death  has  made  us 
forget."  One  further  influence  upon  the  development  of  Jesus 
calls  for  special  mention,  the  annual  visits  of  his  parents  to 
Jerusalem,  in  more  than  the  one  of  which  mentioned  by  Luke 
he  may  well  have  accompanied  them.  That  he  there  came  into 
fuller  touch  with  national  hopes  and  passions  than  was  possible 
in  the  peaceful  routine  of  his  village  home,  and  that  this  may 
have  awakened  the  first  impulse  of  his  genius,  is  a  warrantable 
conclusion.  But  from  the  account  given  of  his  interview  with 
the  "  doctors,"  I  see  no  reason  to  infer  that  this,  or  any  other 
such  early  experience  at  Jerusalem,  "  inspired  him  while  still 
young  with  a  lively  antipathy  for  the  defects  of  the  official 
representatives  of  Judaism."  His  precocity  seems,  on  this 


HEAD   OK   CHRIST. 
From  a  painting  fry  Liiini  in  the  National  (taller)'. 


To  face  /*.  242. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       243 

occasion,  to  have  commanded  the  respect  and  even  the  wonder 
of  these  representatives  ;  and  such  boyish  triumphs  are  recalled 
with  pride  rather  than  with  bitterness  as  a  rule.  That  the 
genius  of  Jesus  did  not  escape  the  notice  of  the  companions  of 
his  youth  and  early  manhood,  is  highly  probable  ;  the  statement, 
in  Luke,  to  the  effect  that  his  mother  treasured  up  the  sayings 
in  which  early  promise  was  revealed,  human  and  credible  in 
itself,  indicates  at  least  her  consciousness  that  he  was  destined 
for  an  exceptional  career.1  We  are  told  that  he  was  about 
thirty  years  old  when  he  definitely  came  forward  as  a  teacher, 
but  it  is  likely  enough  that  there  had  been  earlier  ventures  of 
a  tentative  and  sporadic  nature.  The  determining  impulse 
would  seem  to  have  been  in  great  measure  due  to  the  stir  created 
by  the  passionate  revival  mission  of  John  the  Baptist  and  the 
powerful  echo  awakened  in  his  own  breast  by  the  confident 
anticipation  on  the  part  of  John  of  the  imminent  dawn  of  the 
Messianic  era.  From  the  fact  that  John  substituted  a  private 
baptismal  rite  for  the  official  ceremony  imposed  upon  converts 
to  Judaism,  requiring  the  aid  of  priests,  it  would  seem  that  he 
was  a  Nonconformist ;  and  certainly  the  harshness  of  his 
invective  lends  colour  to  this  conclusion.  The  statement  that 
John  from  the  first  regarded  Jesus  as  the  "  Coming  One  "  is 
highly  improbable  ;  is,  moreover,  incompatible  with  the  fact 
that  his  school  continued  for  some  time  to  exist  side  by  side 
with  the  Christian  Churches.  Certainly  the  two  young  enthusiasts 
found  much  in  common,  but  the  attitude  of  Jesus  is  rather  that 
of  a  pupil  and  admirer  than  of  a  superior.  He  not  only  accepted 
baptism  from  John,  but  began  to  baptize  on  his  own  account. 
Every  genius  must  pass  through  an  imitative  phase.  His 
retirement  to  the  desert  was  also  in  all  probability  prompted 
by  a  short-lived  emulation  of  the  ascetic  tendencies  of  the 
Baptist,  although  it  may  well  have  coincided  with  a  masterful 
impulse  to  the  definite  formulation  of  his  own  purpose.  It 
may,  however,  be  entirely  mythical,  being  suspiciously  reminiscent 
of  the  forty  years' wandering  of  Israel,  "  Jahveh's  first-born  son," 

1  Later,  we  find  her,  in  league  with  her  other  sons,  seeking  to  restrain  him, 
as  one  "  beside  himself."  His  greatness  was  not  to  her  taste  !  (Mark  iii.  21, 
31-35). 


244  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

in  the  wilderness,  the  forty  days'  fast  of  Moses,  and  Elijah's 
journey  without  food  to  Horeb.  In  any  case  there  is  profound 
truth  in  the  ideal  sense  of  the  episode.  The  greater  the  man, 
the  greater  the  possibilities  of  evil  to  be  conquered  and  turned 
to  account.  '  The  founder  of  a  religion  has  so  much  in  him  of 
evil,  of  the  perverse,  of  earthly  passion,  that  he  must  fight 
with  the  enemy  within  him  for  forty  days  in  the  wilderness 
without  food  or  sleep.  .  .  .  Other  men  of  genius  are  good  from 
their  birth  ;  the  religious  founder  acquires  goodness.  The  old 
existence  ceases  utterly  and  is  replaced  by  the  new.  The  greater 
the  man,  the  more  must  perish  in  him  at  the  regeneration."  l 

Enriched  by  contact  with  a  striking  personality  and  a 
fervent  spiritual  movement,  Jesus  returned  to  Galilee,  and, 
in  his  own  broader  and  deeper  way,  took  up  the  task  inspired  by 
John.  Of  Messianic  claims  he,  as  yet,  possibly  had  not  dreamed  : 
he  proclaimed  the  love  of  a  Divine  Father  and  preached  the 
simple  ethics  of  filial  obedience  and  fraternal  charity.  In  a 
sense  rightly,  Renan  regarded  this  first  phase  of  Christ's  mission 
as  the  highest  and  greatest  of  all.  The  negative  iconoclastic 
side  of  his  purpose  is  as  yet  unborn  :  that  was  the  logical 
corollary,  the  necessary  condition,  of  his  acceptance  of  the 
Messianic  role.  If  by  this  acceptance  he  purchased  immortality, 
he  at  the  same  time  forfeited  something  of  the  serene  universality 
of  his  uncommitted  phase.  How  came  this  acceptance  about  ? 

It  was  the  inevitable  outcome  of  his  own  supernatural 
conception  of  Man's  nature  and  destiny,  his  own  aspiring, 
profoundly  intuitive  temperament,  and  the  peculiar  conditions  of 
his  place  and  time.  Of  every  exceptional  personality  among  the 
Jews  of  his  age — of  John  the  Baptist,  for  example — the  question, 
"  Is  this  the  great  Deliverer  ?  "  would  infallibly  arise.  Every 
buch  personality  would  be  forced  to  ask  it  of  himself ;  and 
many,  beside  Jesus,  doubtless  answered  it  in  the  affirmative. 
Jesus  may  have  entertained  the  possibility  at  the  time  of  his 
retreat  beyond  Jordan,  and,  accepting  the  popular  view  of  the 
Messianic  role,  as  that  of  a  great  warrior,  may  have  rejected 
such  a  role  as  in  absolute  discord  with  his  most  cherished  ideals. 
Gradually  he  came  to  see  that  the  prophetic  anticipations  of 

1  Otto  Weininger. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       245 

universal  conquest  were  capable  of  metaphorical  interpretation  : 
this  perhaps  was  the  meaning  of  his  exclamation,  "  I  came  not 
to  bring  peace,  but  a  sword."     The  starting-point  of  his  career 
as  a  teacher  and  reformer  was  his  unique  realisation  of  God 
as  the  Father,  the  tenderly-loving  Father  of  himself,  conse- 
quently of  all  men.     This  was  his  one  central  dogma  :  for  a 
dogma,  if  not  a  mere  metaphor,  it  certainly  is,  though  it  has 
become  the  fashion  to  deny  this.     But  Jesus  had  not  got  very 
far  in  his  work  of  recalling  men  from  formalism  to  simplicity 
of  faith  and  worship,  before  he  attracted  by  his  notoriety  the 
uneasy  attention  of  the  champions  of  orthodoxy.     They  put 
questions  to  him,   the  answer  to  which  involved  either  the 
repudiation  of  the  Mosaic  law  in  its  literality,  or  that  of  his 
own  principles  of  freedom  or  of  love.     Was  it  lawful  to  heal  on 
the  Sabbath  ?  to  eat  without  ceremonial  washing  ?  to  divorce  one's 
wife  as  Moses  permitted  ?     I  think,  with  Schmiedel,  that  "  the 
need  of  combating  the  law  of  Moses  seems  to  supply  the  real 
starting-point "    in   the    career   of   Jesus.     No    mere    prophet 
could  announce  the  abrogation  of  this  divinely-instituted  law. 
That  the  day  had  come  for  its  abrogation  or  supersession  was 
increasingly    clear.     A    superhuman   task   had    been    assigned 
to  him  :  he  must  either  repudiate  it  or  accept  its  implications. 
"  Only  God  Himself  could  alter  His  own  law ;  and  only  His 
greatest  minister,  the  Messiah,  could  be  destined  to  announce 
the  change."     No  doubt,  as  Schmiedel  suggests,  this  conviction 
was  the  result  of  strict  self -scrutiny  and  hard  struggle.     Mean- 
while,   by   an   analogous   but   cruder   process,    his   immediate 
followers  had  arrived  at  the  same  conclusion,  in  their  case, 
however,  attended  by  the  expectation  of  a  temporal  triumph 
which  Christ  saw  that  it  was  needful  to  renounce.     He  sounded 
them  on  the  subject  of  the  popular  opinion  of  his  mission,  and 
of  their  own ;  and  when  Peter  acclaimed  him  as  the  Christ, 
solemnly  accepted  the  dignity,  but  warned  them  "  to  tell  no 
man."     The  determination  to  go  to  Jerusalem  was  a  logical 
result  of  Christ's  acceptance  of  the  Messianic  role.     Judaism 
must  be  attacked  in  its  stronghold ;  but  Jesus  had  few  illusions 
as  to  the  result,  so  far  as  his  own  safety  was  concerned.     He 
would  perish,  but  his  cause  would  prevail.    Unless,  indeed, 


246  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

God  intervened  to  justify  and  miraculously  to  enforce  the  claims 
of  His  chosen  one,  for  that  was  a  possibility  which  the  evidence 
clearly  suggests  that  Christ  intermittently  entertained  up  to 
the  very  moment  of  his  death.  The  desperate  nature  of  the 
enterprise  to  which  he  was  committed  by  the  simultaneous 
acceptance  of  the  Messianic  role  and  repudiation  of  its  traditional 
programme,  could  not  but  react  upon  the  tone,  if  not  the  very 
essence,of  his  teaching.  His  invective  became  harsher,  his  attitude 
towards  the  Mosaic  law  more  uncompromising,  his  personal 
claims  far  more  exalted,  his  preaching  more  argumentative 
and  theological,  than  in  the  days  of  his  early  Galilean  work.  In 
despair  of  the  orthodox  Hierosolymites,  he  begins  to  appeal 
to  the  despised  Samaritans,  to  social  outcasts  and  reprobates, 
even  to  the  Gentiles.  To  be  forced  into  universalism  was  a  gain ; 
but  to  substitute  for  the  beautiful  conception  of  righteousness 
as  a  leaven,  that  of  its  theatrical  inauguration  by  seven  legions 
of  angels,  and  of  himself  as  avenger  and  judge,  was  a  fall, 
clearly  attributable  to  the  anguish*  and  "'embitterment  of  those 
last  days.  Yet,  upon  the  whole,  the  loss  of  charm  and  insight  is 
more  than  compensated  by  the  gain  of  power  and  intensity : 
with  a  clear  prevision  of  the  world-wide  significance  of  his 
purpose  he  rose  to  the  height  of  his  unparalleled  destiny,  in- 
vesting the  ignominy  of  a  felon's  execution  with  all  the  glamour 
of  his  transcendent  ideal.  What,  then,  was  the  intrinsic  purpose 
of  Jesus,  the  truth  for  which  he  lived  and  for  which  he  voluntarily 
died  ?  Renan  says  that  he  gave  Religion  to  humanity,  as 
Socrates  gave  it  Philosophy,  and  Aristotle,  Science.  His  par- 
ticular doctrines  are,  no  more  than  theirs,  necessarily  final  : 
there  is,  in  fact,  a  striking  analogy  between  the  revolt  of  the 
sixteenth  century  against  the  Aristotelian  scholasticism,  and 
that  of  the  nineteenth  century  against  the  stereotyped  formulae 
of  official  Christianity.  Jesus  "  was  obliged  to  use  the  forms 
of  thought  provided  by  his  age,  and  they  were  inadequate 
to  the  loftiness  of  his  ideas."  1  His  refutation  of  Judaism,  of 
legality  as  the  basis  of  religion,  though  nominally  supported 
by  reference  to  prophetic  authority,  was  virtually  self-derived, 
intuitive,  from  first  to  last.  He  exemplified  the  invincible 

1  J.  E.  Carpenter. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       247 

power  of  uncompromising  fidelity  to  the  voice  of  conscience, 
of  the  higher  self,  of  idiosyncrasy,  or  genius  if  you  will.  The 
equation  of  genius  and  morality  is  the  implicit  content,  not 
certainly,  of  his  teaching,  but  of  his  personality  considered 
as  a  whole.  Only  actions  at  once  free  and  necessary — only 
inspired  actions  reach  the  plane  of  true  morality. 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  purpose  of  the  man  to  whose 
courage  and  energy  it  is  in  great  measure  due  that  the  revolu- 
tionary work  of  Jesus,  instead  of  remaining  the  nucleus  of 
a  Judean  sect,  became  the  basis  of  a  world-wide  religion.    The 
conversion  of  Saul  of  Tarsus  took  place  in  or  about  the  year 
38  A.D.,  when  he  was  twenty-six  or  possibly  twenty-eight  years 
of  age.     The  change  of  name  which  seems  to  have  followed 
almost  immediately  is  not  without  psychological  interest  in 
connection  with  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  necrosis  or  death  to 
sin.     He  may  thereby  have  sought  to  emphasise  the  fact  that, 
by  spiritual  "  resurrection,"  he  had  become  a  new  man,  and  to 
express  resentment  against  that  Pharisaism,  zeal  for  which  had 
led  him  to  sin  so  grievously  against  the  light.    When,  in  41  A.D., 
after  three  years  in  Damascus,  Paul  was  compelled  by  the 
hostility  of  the  Jews  to  leave  that  city,  he  for  the  first  time  paid 
a  short  visit  to  Jerusalem,  and  there  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Peter  and  James,  also  of  Barnabas,  a  Cypriot  convert,  whose 
influence  was  to  prove  decisive  in  the  determination  of  his 
career.     That  Barnabas  was  the  discoverer  of  Paul's  genius 
is  evident,  for,  two  years  later,  when  Paul  was  engaged  in  local 
propaganda  in  Syria,  he  sought    him   and  brought  him   to 
Antioch,  whither  he  himself  had  come  as  a  delegate  of  the 
Apostles.     In  this  wealthy  city  the  new  faith  was  making  such 
progress  as  far  outstripped  its  growth  in  Judea  :   here  the  name 
of  Christian  was  first  applied  to  its  professors,  among  whom 
there  was  already  a  growing  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  that 
proselytisation    of    the  Gentiles   so  coldly  regarded  by   the 
Ebionite  faction  at  Jerusalem.1     To  Antioch,  therefore,  the 
true  cradle  of  Gentile  Christendom,  Barnabas  brought  Paul, 


i 


1  Jerusalem  remained  the  city  of  God's  poor,  of  the  Ebionim,  of  the 
Galilean  dreamers  dazed  by  promises  of  the  Kingdom  of  God "  (Renan, 
St.  Paid) 


248  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

feeling,  perhaps,  that  his  great  gifts  were  being  wasted ;  and 
much  of  the  latter's  glory  reverts,  in  Kenan's  opinion,  on  "  the 
modest  man  who  preceded  him  in  all  things,  effaced  himself 
before  him,  discovered  his  worth,  brought  him  to  the  light, 
more  than  once  prevented  his  failings  from  spoiling  all,  and  the 
narrow  ideas  of  others  from  drawing  him  into  revolt."  Such 
a  man  as  Paul  could  not  be  long  at  Antioch  without  being  fired 
by  the  growing  enthusiasm  of  the  Antiochan  believers  for 
the  conversion  of  the  inhabitants  of  Asia  Minor  and  even  of 
the  civilised  world.  The  time  was  believed  to  be  short ;  the 
imminence  of  the  second  coming  was  so  strongly  and  generally 
held,  that  we  find  Paul,  years  later,  discouraging  marriage  on 
this  very  ground.  Funds  were  not  lacking  ;  and  now,  in  Paul, 
a  human  instrument  of  appropriate  power  and  fervour  was  also 
at  hand.  "  Zechariah's  words  were  coming  true  :  the  world 
was  taking  the  Jews  by  the  hem  of  the  garment  and  saying 
to  them,  '  Lead  us  to  Jerusalem.'  ...  On  every  side  the  need 
for  a  monotheistic  religion,  giving  divine  precepts  as  a  basis 
for  morality,  was  being  actively  manifested."  In  association 
with  many  of  the  Ghettoes  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  Mediterranean 
ports,  were  a  number  of  "  persons  fearing  God,"  that  is,  Pagans 
wholly  or  partially  converted  to  Judaism.  But  what  specially 
formed  the  qualification  of  Paul  for  appeal  to  the  Gentiles  was 
the  fact  that  he,  a  Jew  of  the  Jews,  had  firmly  grasped  the  fact 
that  Christianity  implied  a  full  emancipation  from  Judaism. 
This  was  no  doubt  exceptional :  at  Jerusalem  one  did  not 
cease  to  observe  the  petty  details  of  the  Law  because  one  had 
become  a  Christian.  The  fiery  independence  of  Paul  ill  brooked 
any  such  compromise  ;  and  this  in  him,  in  all  probability, 
was  one  of  the  main  features  in  determining  the  attention  of 
Barnabas.  It  so  happened,  too,  that  in  the  course  of  their 
first  mission  (begun  45  A.D.  an.  set.  33-35  ?),  Paul  and  Barnabas 
were  expelled  from  the  synagogue  of  Antioch  in  Pisidia.  They 
withdrew,  protesting  "  that  since  the  Jews  refused  to  hear  the 
word  of  God,  they  would  preach  it  to  the  Gentiles." 

In  Galatea  they  found  the  Pagans  particularly  susceptible 
to  their  Christian  doctrines,  and  made  many  converts  among 
them,  even  more  than  among  the  Jews.  Henceforth,  although 


To  fate  fi.  248. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      249 

perforce  his  work  in  any  new  centre  must  almost  always  have 
taken  the  synagogue  as  its  point  of  departure,  "  the  idea  of  a 
special  vocation  from  God  to  proselytise  the  Gentiles  seems  to 
have  grown  more  and  moreconfirmed  in  Paul'smind."  Through- 
out life  Paul  was  pursued  by  the  hatred  of  the  Judaising 
faction,  who  organised  counter-missions  to  undermine  the 
loyalty  of  his  tenderly  beloved  Galatian  and  Corinthian 
communities  ;  invented  and  applied  various  opprobrious  nick- 
names ;  repaid  his  efforts  on  behalf  of  their  poor  by  humiliating 
demands  on  his  return  to  Jerusalem  ;  and,  in  the  end,  so 
blackened  his  reputation,  that  during  almost  the  whole  of  the 
second  century  his  fame  was  completely  eclipsed.  Still,  he 
fought  on  bravely,  now  bending  to  the  storm,  now  defiantly 
confronting  its  fury.  Like  his  Master,  he  could,  on  occasion, 
justify  his  repudiation  of  the  legal  bondage  of  Mosaic  ceremonial 
by  an  innocently  sophistical  reinterpretation  of  its  record. 
Keenly  aware  of  the  impracticability  of  enforcing  even  a  modicum 
of  Jewish  restrictions  upon  Gentile  converts,  he  never  doubted 
that  his  cause  would  triumph  in  the  end.  But  Judaism  dies 
hard  :  even  to-day,  to  forge  themselves  new  chains  from  its 
rusty  fragments  taxes  the  ingenuity  of  how  many  servile  souls  ! 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  identifying  the  central  aim  of  Marcus 
Aurelius.  Renan  has  epitomised  it  in  a  phrase  :  "  For  him 
Morality  was  the  last  word  of  existence."  That  this  was 
predominantly  the  result  of  inborn  tendency  is  obvious,  if 
only  from  the  very  early  age  and  the  abandon  with  which  the 
future  Emperor  devoted  himself  to  the  rule  of  the  severest 
school  of  philosophy.  Still,  this  purpose  has  its  natural 
history  :  its  growth  was  not  independent  of  circumstances  ; 
and,  fortunately,  he  has  himself  indicated  with  abundant 
clearness  the  chief  obligations  revealed  by  retrospective  self- 
scrutiny.  Marcus  Aurelius  has  some  good  to  record  of  all  his 
relations  :  notably  of  his  mother,  who  died  young,  he  says, 
that  her  purity  of  soul  extended  even  to  refraining  from  the 
thought  of  evil.  But  in  eulogising  his  foster-father,  the  noble 
Emperor  Antoninus,  Aurelius  achieves  an  almost  lyric  enthusiasm. 
Antoninus  it  was,  he  exclaims,  "  who  made  me  comprehend  how 
it  is  possible,  even  while  dwelling  in  a  palace,  to  dispense  with 


250  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

bodyguards,  splendid  raiment,  torches,  and  statues  ;  who  taught 
me,  in  short,  that  a  prince  may  almost  contract  his  life  within 
the  bounds  of  that  of  a  private  citizen  without  thereby  dis- 
playing less  majesty  and  vigour.  .  .  .  Remember,"  he  adjures 
himself,  "  his  constancy  in  accomplishing  the  dictates  of  reason, 
his  equability  under  all  circumstances,  his  holiness,  the  serenity 
of  his  look,  his  extreme  gentleness  of  spirit,  his  contempt  for 
vainglory,  his  keen  penetration ;  how  he  would  never  drop  a 
subject  till  he  had  thoroughly  looked  into  it  and  fully  under- 
stood it ;  how  he  bore  unjust  reproaches  without  a  word  ; 
how  he  did  nothing  hastily  ;  how  he  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  scandal ; 
how  he  carefully  studied  character  and  action ;  .  .  .  frugal  in 
house,  bed,  board,  and  service ;  industrious,  long-suffering, 
abstemious.  .  .  .  Remember,  too,  his  constant  and  even  affec- 
tion, .  .  .  the  joy  with  which  he  accepted  an  opinion  better 
than  his  own,  his  piety  that  had  no  trace  of  superstition.  Think 
of  all  this,  that  your  last  hour  may  find  you  with  a  conscience 
clear  as  his."  A  point  worthy  of  note  in  regard  to  this  panegyric 
is  the  quasi-Christian  character  of  the  qualities  commended. 
One  might  guess  that  one  was  reading  the  eulogium  of  Pope 
Gregory  the  Great.  Hadrian  and  Antoninus  had  both  forbidden 
persecution  of  the  Christians,  and  it  is  a  thousand  pities  that, 
in  this  one  respect,  Marcus  Aurelius  neglected  the  enlightened 
example  of  his  predecessors.  It  was  an  age  of  intellectual  and 
moral  eclecticism,  of  cosmopolitan  culture,  and  altruistic  aspira- 
tion. The  fierce  Roman  spirit  was,  in  this  second  century  A.D., 
considerably  mitigated,  and  Gibbon  has  well  said  of  the  reigns 
of  Antoninus  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  that  they  "  are  possibly  the 
only  period  of  history  in  which  the  happiness  of  a  great  people 
was  the  sole  object  of  government."  Much  of  the  credit  for 
all  this  may  fairly  be  attributed  to  the  influence  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Stoic  and  other  philosophers,  whose  prestige 
among  Romans  of  high  position  had  in  great  measure  superseded 
that  of  religion.  "  Personages  of  rank  maintained  a  household 
philosopher,  who  was  a  sort  of  chaplain.  Before  dying,  it  was 
customary  to  converse  with  some  sage,  just  as.  nowadays,  people 
summon  a  priest."  It  need  scarcely  be  said  that  philosophers 
regarded  with  aversion  the  rival  claims  of  Christianity ;  and, 


MARCUS   AURELIUS. 


To  face  p.  250. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       251 

as  bearing  on  the  attitude  of  Aurelius  himself  towards  its  con- 
verts, it  should  be  remembered  that  Fronto,  the  rhetorician, 
his  teacher  and  friend,  was  deeply  prejudiced  against  the  new 
creed.  The  contemporary  tutor  to  whose  instruction  he  perhaps 
owed  most,  however,  was  Junius  Rusticus,  who  converted  him 
to  the  Stoic  discipline  and  introduced  him  to  the  glorious 
discourses  of  Epictetus.  No  reader  of  the  Meditations  can  fail 
to  appreciate  the  debt  of  the  Emperor  Philosopher  to  the  Slave 
Philosopher.  Strange  irony  of  destiny  that  conferred  a  twin 
immortality  upon  two  men  so  antithetically  circumstanced — 
one  owning  not  even  his  own  body,  the  other  lord  of  the  whole 
civilised  world  !  Of  these  two,  the  slave's  was,  indeed,  in  some 
respects  the  kinglier  soul.  In  the  recorded  sayings  of  Epictetus 
there  was  a  thrill  of  conquest,  of  mastery ;  in  the  meditations  of 
the  pious  Emperor  we  find,  on  the  contrary,  something  a  little 
dolorous  and  strained.  Epictetus  tells  us  that  Socrates,  when 
he  jested  in  the  court  where  his  life  was  at  issue,  showed  that 
"he  knew  how  to  play  ball.  .  .  .  And  so,"  he  continues, 
"  should  we  do  also,  having  the  carefulness  of  the  most  zealous 
players  and  yet  indifference,  as  were  it  merely  about  a  ball." 
This  philosophic  insouciance,  this  proficiency  in  the  "  gay 
science,"  was  denied  to  the  grave  Aurelius,  who  had  lacked  the 
"  kiss  of  a  fairy  "  at  birth.  His  role  was  indeed  the  more  exact- 
ing of  the  two  ;  a  recluse  by  nature,  he  exemplified  the  Stoic 
ideal  by  loyally  fulfilling  the  obligations  of  the  great  part  assigned 
him  in  the  drama  of  destiny. 

Stoicism,  although  it  favoured  personal  ascesis,  never 
countenanced  the  shirking  of  the  domestic,  civic,  or  national 
duties  pertaining  to  one's  lot.  Its  teaching  is  in  many  respects 
curiously  anticipated  by  the  counsel  bestowed  by  the  Lord 
Krishna  in  the  Bhagavad-Gita  on  the  vacillating  warrior  Arjuna 
— "  Without  attachment,  constantly  perform  action  which  is 
Duty.  ...  He  who  acteth,  placing  all  actions  in  the  Eternal, 
abandoning  attachment,  is  unaffected  by  sin  as  a  lotus  leaf  by 
the  waters." 

Such  was  the  aim  set  before  himself  by  Aurelius,  and  man- 
fully pursued  in  the  varied  capacities  of  husband,  father,  citizen, 
Emperor,  general,  and  priest.  Yet  we  have  but  touched  the 


252  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

fringe  of  his  purpose  if  we  overlook  his  positively  saint-like 
passion  for  spiritual  integrity,  for  holiness,  that  is  to  say,  which 
such  words  as  the  following  reveal  :  "  When  wilt  thou,  0  my 
soul,  be  good  and  simple,  all  one,  naked,  more  translucent 
than  the  material  body  that  contains  thee  ?  When  wilt  thou 
taste  fully  the  joy  of  loving  all  things  ?  When  wilt  thou  be 
such  that  thou  canst  at  last  dwell  in  the  city  of  gods  and  men, 
never  making  them  complaint,  and  never  needing  their  forgive- 
ness ?  " 

Marcus  was  forty  years  old  when,  on  the  death  of  Antoninus 
(161  A.D.),  he  came  to  the  purple.  Surrounding  himself  with 
philosophers  of  renown,  summoned  from  every  part  of  the  earth, 
he  proceeded  to  actualise  a  policy  founded  upon  respect  for  his 
fellow-men.  In  his  choice  of  officials  he  was  true  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  his  liberalism,  considering  only  merit,  without  regard 
for  birth  or  even  culture.  He  himself  created  a  large  number 
of  charitable  funds  for  the  benefit  of  the  youth  of  both  sexes. 
He  made  no  concessions  to  popular  caprice,  yet  came  to  be 
venerated  as  the  father  of  his  people.  Of  his  military  achieve- 
ments I  have  spoken  in  an  earlier  chapter,  as  well  as  of  his 
reform  of  the  laws  regulating  the  treatment  of  slaves.  In  a 
time  of  military  emergency  he  voluntarily  sold  by  auction  an 
immense  portion  of  his  Imperial  treasure  and  of  his  own  property, 
in  order  that  the  poor  should  be  spared  the  burden  of  excessive 
taxation.  His  formal  adherence  to  the  State  religion  was  no 
doubt  dictated  by  consideration  for  the  public  welfare.  Sin- 
cerity is  writ  large  over  all  his  works  :  his  few  errors  are  the 
result  neither  of  moral  weakness  nor  of  malice,  but  of  excessive 
scrupulosity.  In  some  few  respects  he  might  have  been  a 
better  Emperor  if  he  had  been  a  worse  man. 

No  human  document  ever  penned  surpasses  in  dramatic 
interest  or  candour  the  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine  ;  very  few 
have  equalled  it  in  these  respects.  The  history  of  his  purpose 
is  the  history  of  his  inner  life,  beginning  with  the  awakening  of 
his  conscience  by  the  study  of  Cicero's  Hortensius  (an.  aet.  18), 
and  ending  with  his  conversion  to  orthodox  Catholicism  (set.  31). 
The  protracted  and  painful  struggle  was  watched  with  eager 
solicitude  by  his  saintly  mother,  whose  influence,  although  she 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       253 

was  far  too  wise  to  intervene  except  when  the  occasion  seemed 
favourable,  must,  in  the  long  run,  have  counted  for  much.  It 
seems  that  from  the  first,  Augustine  must  have  had  some 
foreboding  that  nowhere  but  within  the  fold  which  sheltered  her 
he  would  find  the  ultimate  peace  he  craved — for  no  sooner  had 
the  thirst  for  wisdom  been  aroused  by  the  study  of  Cicero  than 
he  turned  his  mind  to  the  Scriptures,  that  he  might  "  see  what 
they  were."  But  they  seemed  to  him  then  undignified  in 
comparison  with  Ciceronian  dignity.  "  I  disdained  to  be  a 
little  one."  Soon  after  this,  Augustine  fell  into  the  heresy  of 
Manichaeism,  which  offered  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  moral 
evil  less  humbling  in  some  ways  to  man's  pride  than  that  of  the 
Church.  Mani's  doctrine  was,  that  sin  is  not  voluntary,  but 
the  effect  of  material  bondage.  The  spirit  always  wills  right- 
eousness, but  is  numbed  into  unconsciousness  by  the  antagonism 
of  matter.  A  Christ  is  crucified  in  every  soul.  Although 
Augustine  believed  himself  in  the  issue  to  have  rejected  Mani- 
chaeism, it  is  evident  that  its  dualisitic  view  is  in  great  measure 
embodied  in  his  ultimate  theology.  The  contrast  between  the 
two  Adams,  "  in  the  one  of  whom  we  are  guilty  and  corrupt  and 
undone,  in  the  other  accepted  and  renewed  and  exalted," 
became  the  very  keystone  of  his  dogmatic  structure.  The 
difference  was  that  whereas  the  Manichaeans  identified  the 
true  self  with  the  higher  or  spiritual  entity,  and  limited  the 
struggle  to  that  between  the  contrary  tendencies  of  body  and 
spirit,  Augustine,  with  truer  and  deeper  insight,  came  to  see 
that  the  matter  was  far  more  complex  :  that  not  every  impulse 
of  spiritual  origin  can  be  labelled  "  good,"  or  every  physical 
craving  labelled  "  evil."  The  normal  centre  of  consciousness, 
the  "  will  "  or  "  ego,"  might  occupy  either  extreme,  or  an 
intermediate  position.  Still,  upon  the  whole,  as  favouring 
asceticism,  Augustine  certainly  remained  permanently  infected 
with  the  dualistic  virus.  Soon  after  coming  under  the  influence 
of  Mani's  doctrine,  while  engaged  in  the  teaching  of  rhetoric 
at  Thagaste,  Augustine,  still  in  the  early  twenties,  converted 
to  his  own  heretical  views  a  young  friend.  This  young  man 
fell  ill  and  was  baptized,  and,  when  Augustine  essayed  to  jest 
with  him  on  the  subject,  shrank  from  him  as  from  an  enemy, 


254  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and,  with  a  wonderful  and  sudden  freedom,  bade  him  cease. 
The  fever  returning,  he  soon  after  died,  and  Augustine's  heart 
was  "  utterly  darkened  "  by  the  pain  of  bereavement.  Nor 
can  such  an  incident  have  failed  to  contribute  serious  ground 
for  the  reconsideration  of  his  own  position.  Soon  after  he 
removed  to  Carthage,  and  there,  in  his  twenty-sixth  year, 
produced  a  treatise  on  The  Fair  and  the  Fit.  Still  preoccupied 
with  the  problem  of  evil,  his  interest  in  which  may  no  doubt 
be  in  some  degree  attributed  to  the  consciousness  of  strong 
antagonism  between  the  sensuous  and  the  spiritual  cravings  of 
his  own  nature,  Augustine  in  this  work  maintained  in  all 
essentials  the  Manichaean  thesis.  Evil  was  a  separate  entity, 
living  and  active,  not  derived  from  God,  but  contending  with 
Him.  His  philosophical  development  had  now  reached  that 
phase  at  which  reality  is  conceived  as  substance,  not  yet  as 
subject.  He  conceived  God,  that  is  to  say,  as  "  a  vast  and 
bright  body,"  and  himself  as  a  part  thereof.  This  is  a  necessary 
phase  of  logical  evolution  (the  phase  personified  by  Spinoza), 
but  the  time  came  when  Augustine  could  censure  himself 
severely  for  ever  having  passed  through  it,  as  well  as  for  the 
belief  that  this  unchangeable  substance  could  err  upon  con- 
straint, rather  than  that  his  own  changeable  substance  had 
gone  astray  wilfully.  In  his  twenty-eighth  year  or  thereabout, 
Augustine  was  a  little  disillusioned  in  regard  to  Manicheism  by 
the  discovery  that  Faustus,  a  bishop  of  that  sect,  greatly 
esteemed,  who  happened  to  visit  Carthage,  was  a  mere  wind- 
bag, "  utterly  ignorant  of  liberal  sciences."  Hence,  after  nine 
years'  adherence,  his  zeal  for  the  writings  of  Manichseus  was 
blunted. 

Soon  after  this,  Augustine  (set.  28)  journeyed  to  Rome, 
and  set  up  there  as  a  teacher  of  rhetoric.  Though  still  assorting 
with  the  Manichsean  "  elect,"  he  privately  derided  their  fables. 
He  was  more  favourably  disposed  towards  orthodoxy,  but  felt 
difficulties  with  regard  to  the  Incarnation.  "  I  feared  to 
believe  Our  Saviour  to  have  been  born  in  the  flesh  lest  I  should 
be  forced  to  believe  him  denied  by  the  flesh."  This  was 
logical  enough,  assuming  that  he  still  held  the  view  that  matter 
is  the  source  of  all  evil.  He  inclined  towards  the  position  of 


ST.    AUGUSTIXK. 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       255 

the  Academics,  who  were  the  agnostics  of  his  day.  About 
this  time  he  successfully  competed  for  the  post  of  rhetoric 
reader  at  Milan,  and  his  transference  to  that  city  had  important 
effects  on  his  development.  Bishop  Ambrose  received  him 
paternally,  and  he  soon  grew  to  love  him  and  to  hang  on  his 
words  when  preaching,  though  more  charmed  by  the  manner 
than  convinced  by  the  matter  of  the  sermons.  His  mistress 
had  followed  him,  and  he  describes  himself  as  "  enslaved  by 
lust."  When,  later,  his  mother  joined  him,  he  informed  her 
that  he  was  no  longer  a  Manichaean,  but  almost  despaired  of 
attaining  the  truth.  His  mother  urged  him  to  break  with  hie 
mistress  and  to  marry  a  maiden  whom  she  approved.  He 
sent  his  mistress  and  their  son  Adeodatus  back  to  Africa,  but, 
instead  of  marrying,  formed  another  irregular  union.  The 
problem  of  evil  still  perplexed  him  :  he  felt  the  force  of  Am- 
brose's contention  that  free  will  was  the  cause  of  sin,  but 
"  could  not  exonerate  God  from  having  engrafted  into  him 
this  plant  of  bitterness."  New  light  came  to  him  from  the 
study  of  the  Platonists  :  he  was  particularly  impressed  by 
their  partial  agreement  with  the  Logos  doctrine  of  the  fourth 
Gospel.  They  confirmed  the  statement  that  "  in  the 
beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the 
Word  was  God."  Also,  that  "  He  was  in  the  world,  and  the 
world  knew  him  not."  On  the  other  hand,  "  that  '  the  Word 
was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us,'  I  read  not  there.  Nor 
that  '  in  due  time  he  died  for  the  ungodly.'  For  Thou  hast 
hidden  these  things  from  the  wise  and  revealed  them  to  babes, 
not  to  such  as  are  lifted  up  on  the  stilts  of  a  more  elevated 
teaching."  From  Plotinus,  too,  Augustine  gained  some  in- 
sight into  the  fallacy  of  his  hard-and-fast  opposition  of  matter 
and  spirit.  "  Worldly  things  are,"  he  says,  "  since  they  are 
from  Thee,  but  are  not  because  they  are  not  what  Thou  art. 
For  that  truly  is  which  remains  unchangeably."  This  is, 
philosophically,  a  distinct  advance  upon  the  Manichaean 
position,  that  Matter  and  Spirit,  Evil  and  Good,  exist  in- 
dependently and  contend  on  more  or  less  equal  terms.  But 
all  this  dialectic  subtlety  was  fast  losing  its  charm  for  Augustine  : 
the  starved  heart  of  him  asserted  its  claims,  and  would  not  be 


256  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

silenced.  He  was  fired  by  the  example  of  Victorinus,  a  re- 
nowned Roman  rhetorician,  who  by  public  profession  of 
Christianity  had  forfeited  the  right  of  teaching  science  or 
oratory.  With  two  friends  he  set  himself  to  the  study  of  St. 
Paul's  epistles,  feeling  as  though  God  were  searching  him 
through  and  through.  Then  came  a  day  when,  Augustine 
and  Alypius  having  heard  from  a  visitor  the  story  of  his  own 
conversion,  Augustine  retired  to  the  garden  and  strove  vainly 
to  bring  his  soul  to  the  point  of  assent.  Alypius  joined  him 
under  the  tree,  but  could  not  aid  him.  It  was  the  throe  of 
the  new  birth,  but  his  mind  would  not  obey  his  will,  demanding 
no  less  than  the  abdication  of  its  lifelong  supremacy,  the 
confession  of  its  inadequacy,  and  of  the  need  of  a  helping 
hand.  Not  willing  entirely  this  mental  surrender,  his  will 
could  not  enforce  its  command.  Overcome  by  sudden  weep- 
ing, he  left  Alypius  and  cast  himself  down  under  a  certain 
fig-tree.  Then  came  a  voice  as  of  a  boy  or  girl  chanting  : 
"  Take  up  arid  read  f  "  He  went  to  where  the  volume  of  St. 
Paul  was,  opened,  and  read  :  "  Not  in  rioting  and  drunkenness, 
not  in  chambering  and  wantonness,  not  in  strife  and  envying  ; 
but  put  ye  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  make  not  provision 
for  the  flesh  to  fulfil  the  lusts  thereof."  ..."  Instantly, — 
by  a  light  as  it  were  of  serenity  infused  into  my  heart,  all  the 
darkness  of  doubt  vanished  away."  This  was  in  385  A.D., 
when  Augustine  was  thirty-one  years  of  age.  The  moment 
of  complete  surrender,  of  emotional  crisis,  of  mental  suicide, 
was  the  moment  of  victory — henceforth,  whatever  the  flaws 
of  his  theology,  which  do  not  concern  us  now — he  never 
wavered  in  his  purpose  of  complete  self-dedication  to  the 
cause  of  the  Catholic  Church.  He  resigned  his  professorship, 
underwent  public  baptism  at  the  hands  of  Ambrose,  and  after 
Monica's  death,  and  after  having  devoted  three  years  to  study 
and  prayer  in  Thagaste,  received  and  accepted  the  invitation 
of  the  church  at  Hippo,  so  closely  associated  with  his  fame. 

But  it  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  became  of  Adeo- 
datus  and  his  mother. 

There  must  have  been  something  in  the  conduct  or  demeanour 
of  our  next  subject,  Gregory  the  Great,  which  carried  immediate 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       257 

conviction  to  his  associates  that  he  was  a  man  marked  out  by 
destiny  for  great  responsibilities.  Something  hidden  from  or 
misconceived  by  himself,  too,  seeing  that  up  to  the  time  (590 
A.D.)  when,  on  the  death  of  Pelagius,  he,  at  the  age  of  fifty,  was, 
almost  by  violence  and  sorely  against  his  will,  brought  back  to 
Rome  and  consecrated  Pope,  his  dearest  dream  had  been  to 
devote  himself  exclusively  to  the  life  of  monastic  seclusion.  But 
the  instinct  of  his  contemporaries  was  fully  justified  by  the 
event :  Gregory  rose  triumphantly  to  the  height  of  his  unsought 
and  unwelcome  opportunity.  In  the  last  fourteen  years  of  his  life 
he  immortalised  himself  by  completely  transforming  the  almost 
hopelessly  chaotic  ecclesiastical  and  political  situation  which 
had  prevailed  at  the  time  of  his  election.  The  preceding  half 
century  had  been,  for  Italy,  a  time  rendered  hideous  by  almost 
incessant  warfare,  "  wars  of  barbarians,  with  indiscriminate 
slaughter,  wanton  destruction,  unrestrained  plunder,  and 
depopulation.  .  .  .  Lands  remained  untilled,  commerce 
became  impossible,  industries  died  out.  .  .  .  The  power  and 
influence  of  the  Church  were  paralysed."  Italy  was  unequally 
divided  between  the  King  of  the  Pagan  or  Arian  Lombards, 
actively  hostile  to  the  Church,  ruling  at  Pavia,  and  the  Exarch, 
who,  as  the  representative  of  the  effete  Roman  Empire,  held 
court  at  Ravenna.  "Deserted  churches,  vacant'sees,  parishes 
without  priests,  lax  and  incompetent  bishops,  simony  and 
dissensions  among  the  clergy,  were  but  natural  consequences 
of  war,  uncertain  communications,  and  absence  of  supervision." 
Apart  from  the  constant  bickering  of  the  Lombards  and  Imperial- 
ists, both  parties  had  been  taxed  to  the  utmost  by  the  need  of 
resisting  frequent  irruptions  of  Gothic  and  Frankish  barbarians. 
Italy  was  a  mere  cockpit,  a  gladiatorial  arena.  "  To  this  dark- 
ness there  came  a  light,  to  this  chaos  there  came  a  reconstructing 
hand,  to  this  paralysis  there  came  an  energising  soul,  in  the 
luminous,  orderly  and  vigorous  mind  of  Pope  Gregory  the 
Great."  To  his  friend  John,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople, 
Gregory  wrote  soon  after  his  accession  :  "  Worthless  and  weak, 
I  have  taken  charge  of  an  old  ship  very  much  battered ;  the 
waters  break  in  everywhere,  the  rotten  timbers  threaten  ship- 
wreck." 4  To  Narses  :  "  I  feel,  good  sir,  as  if  I  had  lost  children, 


258  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

for  through  these  earthly  cares  I  have  lost  noble  ends.  .  .  . 
Call  me  Mara,  for  I  am  filled  with  bitterness."  These  words,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  deeds  that  followed,  clearly  indicate  the 
painful  birth  of  a  new  and  more  substantial  purpose.  Gregory 
had  not  indeed  found,  but  accepted,  his  true  vocation.  He 
could  not  have  been  the  success  he  was,  had  not  the  self-dis- 
ciplined habits  of  his  previous  life  prepared  him  for  his  arduous 
task.  "  He  stood  now  between  East  and  West,  bearing  with 
the  pettishness  of  old  age  " — the  old  age  of  the  Empire,  "  and 
restraining  the  impetuosity  and  lawlessness  of  youth,"  as 
represented  by  the  Lombard  and  Frankish  nations.  "  No 
attempt  to  attain  political  influence  or  to  gain  political  assistance 
can  be  detected  in  his  letters  "  :  the  Church  was  for  him  a  moral 
power,  and  he  pursued  his  aims  by  the  methods  appropriate  to 
his  conception.  "  He  did  not  pit  race  against  race,  Frank 
against  Lombard,  but  made  both  look  up  to  the  Holy  See." 
To  Augustine,  whom  he  had  sent  upon  his  memorable  mission 
to  England,  and  with  whose  success  he  was  delighted,  he  sent 
instructions  that  the  temples  were  not  to  be  demolished,  only 
the  idols,  but  converted,  after  due  consecration,  to  Christian 
use,  since  the  converts  would  "  more  readily  resort  to  the  places 
with  which  they  were  familiar."  On  the  days  of  sacrifice  they 
might  slay  animals  for  their  own  use,  and  celebrate  the  wonted 
festivities  with  Christian  rites.  To  the  administration  of  the 
Church  Estates  in  various  parts  of  Italy,  Sicily,  Corsica,  Sardinia, 
Dalmatia,  Illyricum,  Gaul,  and  Africa,  he  devoted  much  atten- 
tion, showing  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  agricultural  and 
economic  affairs.  The  revenue  derived  from  these  Patrimonies 
he  regarded  as  the  heritage  of  the  poor,  and  his  local  agents  were 
all  clerics,  carefully  chosen.  They  were  not  allowed  to  vindicate 
claims  by  force  or  by  appeal  to  law.  To  one  in  Sicily  he  wrote  : 
"  We  learn  that  most  unjust  exactions  continue  in  some  of  the 
farms  of  the  Church.  .  .  .  This  we  altogether  condemn.  .  .  . 
We  order  that  whatever  has  been  taken  violently  from  a  family 
shall  be  restored."  ..."  Have  no  hesitation  in  advancing 
money  for  the  benefit  of  the  peasants."  One  of  his  first  cares 
was  the  preparation  of  a  Pastoral  Charge,  to  serve  as  a  general 
guide  for  the  bishops  of  the  time,  providing  a  norm  of  episcopal 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       259 

conduct,  as  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict  had  done  for  the  monks.  His 
dealings  with  the  Lombard  Kingdom  of  Ravenna — a  constant 
menace  to  the  peace  of  Italy — were  a  triumph  in  every  sense 
of  the  word.  "  Without  men  or  material,  without  resources  or 
allies,  he  kept  them  at  bay  for  fifteen  years  by  his  letters,  his 
tact,  his  vigilance,  his  personal  influence."  Working  mainly 
through  Queen  Theodolinda,  he  finally  achieved  the  conversion 
of  her  husband  and  their  subjects  to  the  Church.  By  similar 
methods  he  conquered  for  his  Church  the  vast  regions  beyond 
the  Alps,  bringing  the  outlying  churches  of  Gaul  and  Germany 
into  definite  relations  with  the  Holy  See.  In  the  East  he 
vindicated  his  authority  by  protesting  against  the  pretension 
of  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  to  the  title  of  Ecumenical  (i.e. 
universal)  Bishop.  Over  this  matter  he  was  brought  into  conflict 
with  the  Emperor  himself,  and  the  ultimate  victory  of  the  Curia 
came  after  Gregory's  death .  His  reform  of  the  Ritual ,  and  the  deep 
interest  he  took  in  Church  music,  are  also  deserving  of  mention. 

This  brief  outline  of  the  main  objects  pursued  and  methods 
employed  by  Gregory  during  the  last  fourteen  years  of  his  life, 
may  give  some  idea  of  the  true  catholicity,  the  enlightenment  of 
his  aims.  His  ideal  was,  in  essentials,  that  which  Dante,  long 
after,  sought  to  revive.  The  two  blots  on  his  reputation  are, 
that  he  (perhaps  by  inadvertence)  welcomed  the  accession  of 
the  infamous  Phocas,  murderer  of  his  good  friend  the  Emperor 
Maurice  ;  and  that  he  persecuted  heretics.  In  this  last  respect 
the  Christian  Stoic  once  more  resembles  the  Pagan,  Marcus 
Aurelius,  whose  character  and  career  present,  in  many  ways,  a 
curious  analogy  with  those  of  the  great  Pope. 

The  chief  interest,  psychologically  speaking,  of  Gregory's 
career,  is  the  light  it  throws  on  the  importance  of  opportunity. 
The  elements  of  greatness  were  no  doubt  latent  in  him  from  the 
first,  but  unrecognised  and  unvalued  by  their  possessor.  Great- 
ness in  the  official  sense  was  thrust  upon  him  by  his  contempor- 
aries. It  was  quite  otherwise  with  Mahomet,  a  much  more 
self-centred  and  ambitious  individual.  In  the  section  dealing 
with  Natural  Vocation  I  have  told  how  Mahomet,  as  he  neared 
middle  age,  gradually  drew  apart  from  society,  spending  days 
and  nights  in  prayer  and  meditation  on  Mount  Hara.  He  was 


260  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

awakening  to  a  sense  of  the  grossness  of  the  national  idolatry 
and  the  consequent  need  of  religious  reform.  Some  obscure 
constitutional  change  was  associated  with  this  introspective 
tendency  ;  he  became  subject  to  dreams,  ecstasies,  and  trances. 
Possibly,like  many  other  men  of  genius,  he  was  now  an  epileptic. 
In  his  fortieth  year  (609  A.D.),  while  spending  the  fast-month  of 
Kamadhan  in  the  cavern  of  Mount  Hara,  on  the  night  of  the 
Divine  Decree  (Al  Kader),  Gabriel  appeared  to  him  and  showed 
a  silken  cloth  inscribed  with  the  text  of  the  Koran.1  The 
archangel  exclaimed  :  "0  Mahomet,  of  a  verity  thou  art  the 
prophet  of  God,  and  I  am  his  angel  Gabriel !  "  Such  is  the 
accepted  version  of  the  definite  inception  of  Mahomet's  purpose  ; 
and  that  a  fasting  man  deeply  preoccupied  with  religion  should 
have  had  or  believed  himself  to  have  had  such  an  experience, 
is  in  no  way  incredible.  Mahomet  returned  home  and  confided 
the  annunciation  to  his  wife,  Cadijah,  who  at  once  accepted  his 
prophetic  mission.  So,  too,  did  Waraka,  her  cousin,  a  Christian- 
ised Jew  and  a  mystic,  translator  into  Arabic  of  parts  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  whose  influence  as  a  member  of  their 
household  may  well  have  contributed  much  to  the  awakening 
of  Mahomet's  religious  fervour. 

"  Whenever  there  is  decay  of  righteousness  .  .  .  and  exalta- 
tion of  unrighteousness,  then  I  Myself  come  forth  ; 

"  For  the  protection  of  the  good,  for  the  destruction  of 
evil-doers,  for  the  sake  of  firmly  establishing  righteousness, 
I  am  born  from  age  to  age."  2 

This  quotation  from  the  Bhagavad  Gita  gives  a  good  illustra- 
tion of  Mahomet's  conception  of  the  prophetic  function.  The 
metaphysical  subtlety  by  which  Shri  Krishna  is  made  to  identify 
himself  with  his  predecessors  and  successors,  was  indeed  far 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  Arabian's  cruder  mind.  But  he  believed 
that  the  true  religion  revealed  to  Adam  at  his  creation — the 
direct  and  spiritual  worship  of  the  one  and  only  God — had  been 
repeatedly  corrupted  and  degraded  by  idolatrous  man.  Prophets 
like  Noah,  Abraham,  Moses,  Christ,  each  inspired  by  a  special 

1  The  fact  that  Mahomet  was  unable  to  read  somewhat  detracts  from  the 
appropriateness  of  this  detail ! 

-  The  Ehagavad  GUa,  or  "  The  Lord's  Song."     Trans,  by  A, 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       261 

revelation  from  the  Most  High,  were  sent  from  time  to  time 
to  restore  it  to  its  original  purity.     Of  this  line  of  prophets  he 
claimed  now  to  be  the  last,  if  not  the  greatest,  his  task  the 
purging  of  his  nation  from  the  sin  of  idolatry,  the  recall  of  his 
people  to  the  monotheism  which  he  believed  them  to  have  had 
and  to  have  lost.     Of  any  ambition  for  personal  advancement 
there  is,  at  this  period  of  his  life,  no  evidence  at  all.    He  began 
to  hold  prayer-meetings,   and  working  more  or  less  quietly 
managed  in  the  course  of  the  next  three  years  to  make  some 
forty  converts.     The  secret  gradually  leaked  out,  and  trouble 
began.     Not  only  were  the  prayer-meetings  liable  to  the  inter- 
ruptions of  the  rabble — always  instinctively  hostile  to  religious 
innovations — but  Mahomet's  own  kindred,  the  Koreishites,  to 
whose  family  pertained  the  office  of  guardian  of  the  Kaaba,  were 
of  course  too  deeply  interested  in  the  established  idolatry  to 
regard  Mahomet's   revolutionary  propaganda  with  tolerance. 
In  the  fourth  year  of  his  mission,  having  had  another  vision, 
bidding  him  "  arise,  preach  and  magnify  the  Lord,"  Mahomet 
summoned  his  kinsmen,  the  Koreishites,  and  boldly  announced 
his  views.     An  uproar  ensued,  and  after  this  and  a  second 
appeal  to  his  tribe,  Mahomet  was  subjected  to  much  ridicule  and 
abuse,  dirt  was  thrown  on  him  as  he  prayed  in  the  Kaaba,  he  was 
reviled  as  a  madman,  and  a  poet  named  Amru  derided  his  pre- 
tensions in  lampoons  and  madrigals.    Nevertheless,  his  per- 
sistent attacks  on  idolatry  began  to  have  some  effect,  and  the 
Koreishites,  failing  to  silence  him,  decreed  the  banishment  of 
all  Mahommedans.     From  the  seventh  to  the  tenth  year  of  his 
mission,  Mahomet's  immediate  relatives,  the  Haschemites,  were 
placed  under  a  ban  by  their  tribe  until  they  should  deliver  up 
the  prophet.    His  uncle,  Abu  Taleb,  however,  maintained  him 
in  his  stronghold  near  Mecca,  and,  at  the  peril  of  his  life,  Mahomet 
continued  to  visit  Mecca  during  the  sacred  month,  and  converted 
many  of  the  pilgrims.     In  the  tenth  year  of  his  mission  (619  A.D.) 
the  ban  was  removed,  and  Mahomet  returned  to  Mecca  and  re- 
sumed his  propaganda.     This  year  occurred  the  death  of  his 
first  wife,  Cadi j ah.     To  his  credit  be  it  said  that  he  is  reputed  to 
have  been  faithful  to  her  to  the  end.     "  When  I  was  poor  she 
enriched  me  ;  when  I  was  pronounced  a  liar  she  believed  in  me  ; 


262  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

when  I  was  opposed  by  all  the  world  she  remained  true  to  me," 
he  justly  exclaimed.  Now  he  considered  himself  released  from 
any  restriction  of  his  marital  proclivities  ;  he  claimed  and 
exercised  the  right  to  have  as  many  wives  as  he  chose.  To  each 
of  his  followers  four  wives  and  no  more  were  permitted.  Soon 
after  his  wife's  death  occurred  the  vision  described  in  the  Koran, 
in  which  Mahomet  visited  Jerusalem  and  the  seventh  heaven. 
After  ten  years'  effort  Mahomet  still  found  himself  compelled 
to  live  concealed  among  his  adherents  in  Mecca,  but  the  time 
of  his  probation  was  nearing  its  end.  At  Jathreb  (now  Medina), 
70  miles  north  of  Mecca,  abode  many  Jews  and  heretical  Chris- 
tians, and  some  of  the  pilgrims  from  this  place  were  so  impressed 
by  Mahomet's  doctrine,  that  they  believed  him  to  be  the  prom- 
ised Messiah.  In  the  thirteenth  year  of  his  mission  (622  A.D.) 
Mahomet  (set.  53)  was  invited  by  his  converts  at  Medina  to  come 
and  live  among  them.  To  this  he  agreed  on  their  promising 
to  obey  him  in  all  things,  and  from  their  emissaries  he  chose 
twelve  apostles,  of  whom,  however,  one  hears  nothing  more. 
Carlyle  calls  Mahommedanism,  as  taught  by  its  founder,  "  a 
confused  form  of  Christianity,"  and  there  are  abundant  evi- 
dences of  the  fact  that  what  he  had  learned  from  Waraka,  and 
possibly  from  the  Nestorian  monks  in  Palestine,  had  left  a 
profound  impression  on  his  mind.  Myself,  I  should  rather  call 
his  religion  a  defeminised  than  a  confused  Christianity.  The 
genius  of  Mahomet  is  exclusively  masculine,  that  of  Christ 
androgynous.  Mahommedanism  resists  opposition,  even  modi- 
fication, until  the  breaking-point  is  reached  ;  Christianity,  by 
reason  of  superior  subtlety,  adapts  itself  to  all  emergencies, 
conquering  while  it  seems  to  yield. 

At  Medina,  Mahomet,  living  frugally  and  laboriously,  soon 
attained  to  a  commanding  position,  built  a  mosque,  and  preached 
devotion  to  God  and  humanity  to  man.  He  made  many 
converts  in  the  city  ;  fugitives  flocked  to  him  from  Mecca, 
and  proselytes  from  the  desert  tribes.  His  purpose  assumed 
a  new  aspect :  "he  found  an  army  at  his  disposal,  and  the 
desire  to  use  it  naturally  followed."  Carlyle  has  little  patience 
with  those  who  cavil  at  the  prophet  for  his  reliance  on  the 
sword.  "  You  must  first  get  your  sword,"  he  pertinently 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      263 

remarks — "  on  the  whole  a  thing  will  propagate  itself  as  it  can." 
Still  there  is  no  denying  that  the  aspirations  of  Mahomet  became 
to  some  extent  vitiated  by  the  taint  of  mere  ambition.  He 
grew  less  and  less  tolerant,  and,  what  I  consider  more  blame- 
worthy, showed  a  growing  inclination  to  justify  his  amorous 
and  other  vagaries  by  the  plea  of  special  revelation.  In  this 
he  was  false  to  his  own  insight  :  the  moral  intuitions  of  a  religi- 
ous genius  are  never  seriously  at  fault.  Posterity  has  amply 
avenged  the  lapse  from  sincerity  ;  there  are  numbers  of  well- 
meaning  but  ignorant  folk,  who,  perplexed  by  rumours  born  of 
his  inconsistency,  still  regard  Mahomet  as  a  mere  charlatan.  As 
Mahomet's  power  grew,  the  material  element  of  his  purpose 
continually  expanded,  but  the  spiritual  aim  which  ensouled  it 
was  never  absent  from  his  mind.  Supreme  in  Medina  (though 
the  Jews  gave  him  trouble  there  by  ridiculing  his  prophetic 
claims),  Mahomet  began  to  turn  his  thoughts  once  more  to 
Mecca,  the  stronghold  of  idolatry.  He  would  conquer  it,  not  as 
Jesus  attempted  to  conquer  Jerusalem,  by  the  unsupported 
might  of  his  divine  mission,  but  by  sheer  force  of  arms.  He 
so  harried  the  caravans  of  the  Koreishites,  that,  six  years  after 
his  flight  from  the  Holy  City,  on  his  reappearance  at  the  gates 
of  Mecca  with  1400  "  pilgrims,"  his  assurances  of  peaceful 
intentions  were  accepted,  a  ten  years'  truce  was  concluded, 
and  free  access  for  Moslems  to  the  shrine  w.as  conceded.  Of 
this  privilege  he  and  his  followers  availed  themselves  in  the 
next  year.  His  captains  were  constantly  subduing  the  refractory 
tribes  of  the  desert,  and,  as  his  realm  extended,  he  turned  his 
attention  to  foreign  missions.  The  Emperor  Heraclius  and 
Khosru  II.  of  Persia  were  visited  by  his  ambassadors,  inviting 
them  to  accept  the  faith  of  Islam.  Syria  was  invaded  by  a 
Moslem  force,  and  though  Zeid,  its  leader,  was  slain,  the 
Imperial  force  had  been  routed  and  much  booty  was  brought 
back  to  Medina.  Eight  years  after  the  Hegira  (A.D.  630), 
having  thousands  of  Arab  warriors  at  his  disposal,  Mahomet 
felt  that  his  hour  of  victory  was  at  hand.  He  accused  the 
Meccans  of  having  violated  the  treaty  of  628,  and  although  the 
bitterest  of  his  foes,  Abu  Sofian,  came  and  humbled  himself  at 
Medina,  Mahomet,  undeterred,  set  forth  for  Mecca  at  the  head 


264  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  10,000  men.  Resistance  was  out  of  the  question  ;  Mahomet 
entered  the  city  in  pilgrim  garb,  reciting  prophecies  of  the  event, 
made  the  seven  circuits  of  the  shrine,  demolished  the  360  idols, 
and  received  the  spiritual  allegiance  of  the  inhabitants.  Ma- 
homet was  now  supreme  lord  of  almost  the  whole  of  Arabia. 
He  returned  to  Medina  triumphant,  and  shortly  afterwards 
sent  Ali  to  Mecca  to  announce  that  after  four  months'  grace  all 
idolaters  would  be  killed  wherever  and  whenever  found.  In 
the  beginning  of  the  next  year  (631)  Medina  was  thronged  with 
envoys  from  distant  tribes  and  from  princes  who  had  become 
converts  to  Islam  and  tributaries  of  his  vast  realm.  In  the 
following  year,  prostrated  by  the  death  of  his  only  son,  Mahomet 
(set.  62),  with  his  nine  wives,  at  the  head  of  an  immense  throng, 
made  a  final  pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  He  died  next  year  (632), 
never  having  assumed  regal  state  or  departed  from  the  sim- 
plicity of  his  habits,  and  leaving  no  wealth  behind  him.  That 
power  and  conquest  were  for  him,  even  to  the  last,  but  means 
to  his  end,  must  be  conceded  by  any  impartial  critic.  The 
man  had  genuine  humility — witness  his  reply  to  one  who  asked 
whether  he  would  be  exempt  from  the  rule  that  no  man  would 
enter  Paradise  on  the  strength  of  his  own  merit.  The  prophet 
placed  his  hand  upon  his  head  and  said  three  times  with  great 
solemnity  :  "  Neither  shall  I  enter  Paradise  except  God  cover 
me  with  His  mercy."  It  has  been  well  said  of  Mahomet  that 
his  great  schemes  grew  out  of  his  fortunes,  not  his  fortunes 
out  of  his  schemes.  But  this  applies  only  to  their  material 
element,  not  at  all  to  his  religious  aspiration. 

Far  simpler  than  the  case  of  Mahomet  is  the  problem  of 
elucidating  the  purpose  of  St.  Francis  d'Assisi,  a  purpose 
pure  as  man's  may  well  be  of  any  earthly  alloy  or  taint  of 
mere  self-seeking.  Of  the  innocent  frivolity  of  his  adolescent 
years  I  have  already  spoken  ;  even  then  a  heart  so  tender  must 
have  been  chastened  sometimes  by  the  influence  of  his  gently 
born  and  saintly  mother.  She  prayed  for  him  without  ceasing, 
cherishing  always  the  hope  that  in  God's  good  time  he  would 
prove  worthy  of  her  dreams.  In  his  boyhood  Francis  must 
have  heard  talk  of  Peter  Waldo,  the  wealthy  usurer  of  Lyons, 
who  in  1171  distributed  his  wealth  to  the  poor,  lived  thence- 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       265 

forth  on  alms,  and  sent  his  followers  two  by  two  into  theTtowns 
and  villages.  Pier  Bernardone  must  often  have  met  those 
"poor  men  of  Lyons"  in  the  course  of  his  mercantile  expeditions, 
but  the  worldly  wisdom  with  which,  no  doubt,  he  censured 
their  folly,  would  not  efface  the  admiration  secretly  awakened 
in  the  chivalrous  heart  of  his  younger  son.  The  seed  of  Waldo's 
example  had  fallen  on  fertile  soil.  I  have  told  how,  after  the 
long  illness  which  in  his  twenty-third  year  (1204)  followed 
his  release  from  prison,  Francis  drew  apart  from  his  gay  com- 
panions and  sought  relief  from  his  remorseful  anguish  in  peni- 
tence and  prayer.  Somewhere  about  this  time  he  gave  a  banquet 
to  his  comrades,  but  could  not  recall  his  familiar  mood  of  gay 
abandon  even  for  that  hour.  Challenged  to  tell  of  what  lady's 
charms  he  mused  so  deeply,  he  replied,  "  I  think  of  a  spouse 
lovelier,  richer,  purer  than  you  can  possibly  imagine."  The 
seed  of  Waldo's  example  was  germinating  :  it  was  to  Poverty, 
to  Renunciation,  that  his  heart  was  irresistibly  being  drawn. 
His  betrothal  to  the  lady  of  his  choice  was  in  this  wise  :  In 
the  autumn  of  1205  he  visited  Rome,  and,  having  emptied 
his  purse  on  the  altar  of  St.  Peter's,  changed  tunics  with  a 
beggar  on  the  church  steps,  and  spent  the  day  begging  from 
passers-by.  Soon  after  his  return  to  Assisi,  kneeling  one 
day  before  the  painted  crucifix  of  San  Damiano,  the  figure 
seemed  to  quicken,  and  bade  him  "  Go  and  restore  my  falling 
Church."  His  belief  in  the  authenticity  of  this  vision,  which 
he  at  first  interpreted  in  its  most  literal  sense,  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  some  little  while  after,  collecting  stones  and  mortar, 
he  with  his  own  hands  repaired  the  structures  of  the  churches  of 
San  Pietro,  San  Damiano,  and  Santa  Maria  degli  Angeli.  But 
first  he  had  to  break  definitely  with  the  old  life  and  with  all 
family  ties  and  responsibilities.  His  father,  incensed  at  what 
he  deemed  the  frenzy  of  his  pampered  son,  had  imprisoned 
him  in  a  cellar.  Released  by  his  mother,  he  ignored  her  prayers 
that  he  would  submit  himself  to  the  paternal  discipline,  and 
sought  refuge  with  a  priest  at  San  Damiano.  His  father  sought 
him  out  and  brought  him  to  the  bishop.  Then  Francis,  to 
symbolise  his  repudiation  of  all  earthly  authority  or  obligation, 
stripped  himself  naked,  and,  handing  his  clothes  to  Pier  Bernar- 


266  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

done,  exclaimed,  "  Now  I  have  no  father  for  ever,  but  our  Father 
who  is  in  Heaven."  In  the  same  spirit,  two  days  before  his 
death,  Francis  caused  himself  to  be  laid  naked  on  the  ground 
in  token  of  his  fidelity  to  the  Poverty  he  had  espoused  twenty 
years  before. 

If  at  this  time  Francis  believed  that  a  radical  change  had 
been  supernaturally  effected  in  the  inborn  disposition  of  his 
character,  he  was  doubtless  deceived.  The  psychology  of 
such  conversions,  however  mysterious  or  sensational  they 
may  appear,  is  by  no  means  unintelligible.  The  "  will  to 
power  "  he  had  never  lacked — it  was  only  that  now  he  had 
come  to  an  understanding  with  himself  as  to  the  means  by  which 
it  must  be  realised,  had  purified  it  of  extraneous  and  intoler- 
ably uncongenial  accretions.  "  I  know  that  I  shall  become 
a  great  prince,"  he  had,  in  the  hour  of  his  ephemeral  military 
ambition,  half-humourosly  declared.  A  great  prince  he 
still  aspired  to  be,  but  he  had,  at  least  instinctively,  arrived 
at  the  perception  that  his  talent  was  for  giving,  not  for  getting. 
For  such  men  to  give  what  they  have  is  less  than  nothing ; 
they  must  give  themselves  to  the  last  drop  of  their  blood,  the 
last  breath  of  their  nostrils.  What  a  man  gives  is  the  supreme 
test  of  his  greatness,  and  it  is  because  they  so  ill  satisfy  this 
final  requirement  that  our  verdict  upon  such  great  getters  as 
Frederick  and  Napoleon  has  ever  a  carping,  a  dubious  note. 
Hampered  by  conventional  "  duties  "  in  the  satisfaction  of  an 
imperious  instinct,  Francis  thus  made  his  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence, thus  cleared  the  decks  for  action.  Let  us  relinquish 
to  Pharisees  the  cant  of  "  self-abnegation  "  ;  to  assert  himself 
as  he  was,  Francis  boldly  threw  overboard  the  self  that  such 
people  expected  him  to  be.  He  who  shrinks  with  pious  horror 
from  the  suggestion  that  the  career  of  a  saint  may  be  initiated 
by  an  act  of  self-will,  should  candidly  inquire  of  himself  what 
would  be  his  feelings  if  a  son  of  his  own  should  behave  to  him 
as  Francis  behaved  to  Pier  Bernardone. 

Early  in  1209,  Francis  (an.  set.  28),  having,  as  sole  wor- 
shipper in  a  church,  been  struck  by  the  reading  of  the  text, 
"  As  ye  go,  preach,  saying  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  hand," 
entered  the  church  of  San  Giorgio  barefoot,  with  a  rope-girdled 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       267 

grey  tunic,  and  addressed  the  congregation.  It  is  thought 
that  he  had,  since  his  conversion,  spent  a  year  with  a  hermit 
near  Casena,  who  wore  a  similar  habit  and  preached  the  "  Gospel 
Rule"  of  Augustine.  If  so,  the  influence  of  this  hermit  probably 
played  its  part  in  determining  the  form  of  his  ultimate  purpose. 
One  by  one,  disciples  joined  him,  those  who  had  wealth  first 
disposing  of  it  by  distribution  to  the  poor  ;  and  in  the  autumn 
of  next  year,  their  number  being  then  twelve  in  all,  they  pro- 
ceeded to  Rome,  and  by  the  aid  of  Bishop  Guido  of  Assisi,  and 
of  Cardinal  Colonna,  obtained  access  to  the  Pope,  who  after 
some  demur  granted  them  as  "  Brothers  Minor,"  a  licence  to 
preach.  This  official  recognition  may  have  been  necessary  : 
without  it  Francis  and  his  followers  would  have  been  regarded 
as  mere  sectaries,  unqualified  practitioners  ;  and  would  have 
been  liable  to  persecution  on  that  account.  But  it  was  to 
prove  no  unmixed  blessing  :  henceforth  the  grasp  of  the  Pope 
slowly  tightened  upon  the  new  Order,  and  in  the  end  the 
primitive  simplicity,  the  Christian  anarchy,  which  was  the 
very  essence  of  its  founder's  intention,  was  tampered  with  to 
an  extent  that  filled  him  with  despair.  Soon  after  the  return 
of  the  twelve  Brothers  Minor  to  Assisi,  they  received  from 
Abbot  Maccabeo  the  sanctuary  of  Santa  Maria  degli  Angeli, 
which  was  to  be  the  permanent  headquarters  of  the  Order. 
Proselytes  poured  in ;  huts  of  wood  and  clay  were  built  for 
their  accommodation ;  and  to  this  rude  settlement  they 
returned  twice  yearly  from  their  preaching  expeditions  into 
the  outlying  towns  and  villages.  In  1212,  as  a  consequence 
of  the  conversion  to  the  Rule  of  Clare,  the  eldest  daughter  of 
Count  Favorino  degli  Sciffi,  followed  by  that  of  her  two  sisters 
and  of  the  Countess  herself,  an  affiliated  Sisterhood  came  into 
existence,  whose  members,  exempted  by  the  chivalry  of  St. 
Francis  from  the  functions  of  mendicancy  and  preaching, 
devoted  themselves  to  nursing  the  sick,  feeding  the  poor, 
clothing  the  naked,  preparing  herbal  medicines,  and  em- 
broidering altar-cloths.  In  the  same  year  Francis  made  a 
vain  attempt  to  reach  Palestine  ;  and  this  was  the  first  of  a 
series  of  foreign  missions  which  within  a  few  years  carried  the 
flood  of  enthusiasm  through  Syria,  France,  and  Spain.  The 


268  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

frequent  absences  of  the  founder  led,  however,  to  a  delegation 
of  authority,  which  in  a  short  time  resulted  in  a  sort  of  con- 
spiracy against  what  many  considered  the  impracticability  of 
his  ideas.  The  scholars  who  had  joined  the  Order  found  it 
hard  that  they  were  precluded  from  owning  even  a  Bible  or 
a  psalter.  Cardinal  Ugolino,  the  official  patron  of  the  Order, 
sided  with  these  malcontents,  but  Francis  refused  with  passion- 
ate vehemence  to  accord  them  any  special  privileges  or  ex- 
emptions. "  God  called  me  into  the  way  of  simplicity  and 
humility.  .  .  .  Do  not  speak  to  me  of  the  Rule  of  St.  Benedict, 
of  St.  Augustine,  of  St.  Bernard,  nor  of  any  other  saint.  .  .  . 
God  will  confound  you  through  your  knowledge  and  your 
wisdom."  In  the  end  the  Church  view  inevitably  prevailed  : 
the  rule  of  poverty  was  mitigated  ;  the  brothers  were  gathered 
into  communities,  into  houses ;  were  granted  privileges  and 
possessions  ;  had  churches  of  their  own ;  were  under  strict 
ecclesiastical  control ;  were  employed  in  quasi-political 
functions,  as  messengers,  agents,  and  what  not.  "  Woe  unto 
those  brethren  that  set  themselves  against  me  in  this  matter," 
cried  Francis,  "  which  I  know  of  a  certainty  to  be  of  the  will 
of  God,  .  .  .  albeit  I  unwillingly  condescend  unto  their  will." 
Humble  and  self-distrustful  by  nature,  weakened  by  ill-health, 
and  prostrated  in  spirit  by  the  sense  of  his  failure,  Francis 
likened  himself  to  a  little  black  hen  whose  wings  could  no 
longer  shelter  her  numerous  chickens.  At  the  close  of  the 
autumn  chapter  of  1220,  he  (aet.  39)  resigned  to  Pietro  de 
Cattani  the  direction  of  the  Order,  kneeling  and  promising 
obedience,  while  the  friars  who  loved  him  wept  sore.  "  Were 
the  brethren  willing  to  walk  according  to  my  will,  ...  I 
would  that  they  should  have  none  other  minister  but  me  until 
my  dying  day."  Six  years  later,  when  he  lay  at  Assisi  almost 
at  the  point  of  death,  the  gaiety  which  rather  scandalised 
Brother  Elias  would  sometimes  be  broken  by  cries  revealing 
the  rancour  of  an  unhealed  wound.  "  Where  are  they  who 
have  taken  my  brothers  from  me  ?  Where  are  they  who  have 
robbed  me  of  my  children  ?  .  .  .  Could  I  but  be  present  at  the 
Chapter  General,  I  would  let  them  know  my  will."  His  final 
blow  for  the  restoration  of  his  ideal  in  its  pristine,  but  all  too 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       269 

other-worldly,  simplicity,  was  the  bequeathal,  in  his  Testa- 
ment, of  Poverty  to  all  faithful  friars.  It  was  directed  to  be 
read  with  the  Rule  of  1223  at  the  Chapters  General  of  the 
Order,  but  Elias,  the  real  though  untitled  successor  to  his 
authority,  backed  by  the  Pope  himself,  promptly  absolved  all 
the  brethren  from  literal  obedience. 

Miss  A.  M.  Stoddart,  in  her  biography  of  the  Saint,  writing 
presumably  from  an  extremely  Protestant  point  of  view,  has 
very  harsh  things  to  say  with  regard  to  the  "  betrayal  "  of  his 
ideals  by  professed  admirers,  notably  Elias  and  Cardinal  Ugolino. 
Elias  was  a  traitor  no  doubt,  but  there  is  much  to  be  said  in 
defence  of  the  official  scruples  of  the  Cardinal,  the  genuineness 
of  whose  regard  for  Francis  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt.  In  my 
opinion,  it  says  much  for  the  sincerity  of  thirteenth  century 
Catholicism  that  the  sublime  indiscretions  of  this  enfant  terrible 
did  not  blind  his  orthodox  contemporaries  to  the  value  of  his 
work  and  the  beauty  of  his  example.  The  general  feeling  with 
regard  to  him  is  well  summarised  in  the  saying  of  the  writer  of 
the  Fioretti,  that  "  the  faithful  servant  of  Christ,  St.  Francis, 
was  in  certain  things  well-nigh  another  Christ,  given  to  the  world 
for  the  salvation  of  mankind."  He,  in  fact,  reproduced  with 
marvellous  fidelity  not  only  many  of  the  greatest  qualities,  but 
also,  and  in  exaggerated  form,  some  of  the  limitations  of  his 
Master.  His  obscurantism  is  a  case  in  point :  he  carried  his 
hostility  to  intellectualism  to  absurd  lengths,  wishing  not  merely 
to  make  the  heart  supreme  over  the  head,  but  to  ignore  the 
dictates  of  reason  altogether.  When  in  doubt  which  road  to  take, 
he  once  made  Friar  Masseo  turn  round  many  times,  and  when 
he  stopped  with  his  face  turned  by  chance  toward  Siena, 
declared  that  to  be  the  God-appointed  route.  At  Ancona  he 
made  a  child  who  was  playing  near  the  shore  choose  eleven 
friars  to  accompany  him  on  his  Syrian  mission.  In  all  this  he 
was  rigidly  conforming  with  the  requirements  of  the  Christian 
ethic — his  beloved  "  Gospel  Rule  " — but  he  was  acting  in  a  quite 
irrational  manner.  The  friars  whom  he  sent  into  Germany  and 
Hungary,  being  totally  ignorant  of  the  languages  in  which  they 
were  to  preach,  not  only  met  with  rough  usage,  but  inevitably 
failed  to  accomplish  the  purpose  of  their  mission,  The  wholesale 


270  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

conversion  of  industrious  citizens  into  ecstatic  mendicants, 
however  edifying,  must  have  had  serious  drawbacks  from  a 
utilitarian,  not  to  say  a  sanitary,  point  of  view.  There  is  no 
short  cut  to  Utopia  ;  a  genuine  Christian  must  be  born,  not  made, 
and  is  perhaps  not  born  more  than  once  in  a  century.  Such 
exalted  ideals  are  far  beyond  the  attainment  of  commonplace 
humanity  ;  and  it  was  just  his  failure  to  realise  this  hard  fact 
that  in  a  measure  justified  the  ecclesiastical  attitude  with  regard 
to  St.  Francis.  He  was  right  in  adopting  for  himself  the  Rule 
of  Poverty,  which  expressed  so  perfectly  his  need  of  reliance  upon 
the  love  of  his  fellow-men.  He  was  wrong  in  supposing  that  the 
indiscriminate  imitation  of  his  example  by  those  who  had  no 
such  need  would  prove  a  panacea  for  the  ills  of  humanity.  But 
the  work  of  such  heroic  souls  is  not  finally  to  be  judged  by  its 
immediate  or  visible  effects  :  it  is  not  for  an  age,  but  for  all 
time. 

The  genius  of  St.  Francis  may  be  likened  to  a  clear  flame, 
as  of  a  torch  that  consumed  itself,  leaving  no  perceptible  by- 
products of  its  combustion.  That  of  Luther,  on  the  other  hand, 
gave  a  large  proportion  of  heat  as  well  as  its  modicum  of  light, 
and  fumes  provocative  to  the  eyes  if  not  to  the  nose  of  the 
bystander.  "  I  am  the  rough  woodman,"  he  declared,  "  who 
has  to  make  a  path  "  ;  and  the  phrase  truly  indicates  not  only 
the  vigour  but  the  ruthlessness  of  the  man  of  action.  On  his 
visit  to  Rome  in  1511  (set.  27),  some  four  years  after  his  ordina- 
tion, his  keen  eyes  detected  much  of  the  cynical  irreligion  of  the 
ecclesiastical  atmosphere.  "  Good  Christian  "  was,  in  priestly 
circles,  a  term  of  derision,  as  who  should  say  "  Simpleton." 
"  Bread  thou  art  and  bread  thou  shalt  remain ;  wine  thou  art 
and  wine  thou  shalt  remain,"  was  the  facetiously- amended 
formula  favoured  by  the  knowing  ones  in  the  act  of  celebration. 
On  resuming  work  at  Wittenberg,  Luther,  in  his  lectures  on  the 
Psalms  and  the  Pauline  Epistles,  true  to  the  teaching  of  Staupitz, 
from  which  he  had  derived  comfort  in  the  days  of  his  own 
perplexity,  contravened  the  current  view  that  forgiveness  can 
be  earned  by  good  deeds  or  by  ceremonial  conformity,  insisting 
on  the  faith-inspired  acceptance  of  Gods  mercy  as  the  sine 
qua  non  of  salvation.  The  labour  spent  in  mastering  the 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      271 

subtleties  of  scholastic  theology  he  accounted  vain  and  sterile  ; 
and  studied  above  all  things  to  achieve  a  certain  homely  direct- 
ness of  style  in  his  preaching.  He  was,  in  fact,  already  at  issue 
with  the  fundamental  principles  of  ecclesiastical  officialdom, 
although  professing,  rightly  perhaps,  that  his  view  was  a  return 
to  the  orthodox  position  as  represented  in  the  fourteenth  century 
by  Tauler,  and  in  the  fourth  by  St.  Augustine.  The  strength  of 
his  dawning  purpose  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  was  firm-set  on  the 
rock  of  his  own  religious  experience  :  on  realising  the  hopelessness 
of  attaining  his  ideal  of  righteousness  he  had  all  but  succumbed 
to  a  frenzy  of  superstitious  terror,  but  had  been  restored  to 
serenity  by  the  conviction  that  the  one  thing  required  of  him — 
an  attitude  of  surrender,  a  humble  acceptance  of  the  free  gift  of 
salvation — was  perfectly  within  his  power.  Here,  then,  we  have 
already  the  germ  of  the  Lutheran  doctrine  of  "  Christian 
Liberty,"  and  although  at  this  time  he  himself  can  hardly  have 
realised  its  destructive  implications,  there  were  not  wanting 
observers  who  surmised  that  it  might  carry  him  far.  Pollich, 
one  of  the  eldest  of  the  Wittenberg  circle  of  theologians,  ventured 
the  prediction  :  "  This  monk  will  revolutionise  the  whole  system 
of  scholastic  teaching."  It  must  by  no  means  be  forgotten 
that  the  economic  situation  in  Germany  had  created  a  strong 
feeling  of  impatience  with  regard  to  the  extortions  practised  in 
the  name  of  the  Papal  authority.  Ecclesiastical  fiefs  and 
benefices  were  taxed  to  such  a  degree  that  the  country  was  being 
impoverished  by  the  constant  flow  of  gold  into  the  bottomless 
coffers  of  Rome  ;  and  the  national  and  provincial  authorities  were 
at  their  wits'  end  for  money.  The  Emperor  Maurice,  himself 
a  German,  was  fully  alive  to  the  seriousness  of  the  matter,  and, 
some  years  later,  when  the  great  struggle  for  decentralisation  had 
fairly  begun,  expressed  a  desire  that  "  the  monk  "  should  be 
protected,  as  "  he  might  some  day  be  wanted."  This  was  all  the 
more  significant  in  that  Maurice  was  by  no  means  at  one  with 
Luther  in  regard  to  his  doctrinal  and  ecclesiastical  contentions. 
We  may  be  sure  that  the  overburdened  tax-payers  of  Saxony 
and  the  other  principalities  were  not  backward  in  voicing  their 
grievances  :  disaffection  with  regard  to  the  papal  pretensions 
was  in  the  air,  and  much  of  the  popular  immunity  and  princely 


272  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

protection  which  Luther  enjoyed  would  remain  inexplicable  but 
for  the  fact  that  he  was  accepted  as  champion  of  the  nationalist 
cause.  No  doubt  this  disaffection  had  its  effect  upon  Luther's 
active  intelligence  ;  remembering  what  he  had  observed  at  Rome 
and  elsewhere  of  the  greed  and  corruption  prevalent  in  priestly 
circles, — noting,  too,  the  way  in  which  the  loyalty  and  superstition 
of  the  masses  were  being  shamelessly  exploited  for  ignoble  ends, 
• — he  was  evidently  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  unquestioning 
subservience  to  all  the  obligations  imposed  in  the  name  of 
religion  could  no  longer  be  regarded  as  essential  to  salvation.  So 
it  was  that  he  was  led  to  substitute  a  purely  subjective  criterion — 
to  make  redemption  or  reprobation  essentially  dependent,  not 
upon  life  and  conduct  considered  as  a  whole,  but  upon  foe  spiritual 
attitude  of  the  believer.  There  was  not  much  that  was  new  in  the 
positive  side  of  his  purpose  at  this  phase  of  its  development : 
faith  had  always  been  required  of  her  subjects  by  the  Church, 
at  least  in  theory.  It  was  what  he  rejected  as  immaterial,  or  at 
least  inessential,  that  gave  him  his  hold  on  those  who  were 
seeking  a  pretext  for  breaking  with  Rome.  The  building  of  St. 
Peter's  was  already  begun  at  the  time  of  Luther's  visit  to  Rome 
(1511),  and  Pope  Leo  x.,  who  had  now  succeeded,  determined  on 
a  special  sale  of  indulgences  in  order  to  procure  funds  for  the 
completion  of  the  work.  Accordingly,  in  1517,  a  profligate 
Dominican,  John  Tetzel,  appeared  on  the  scene,  and,  being 
forbidden  by  the  Elector  to  enter  Wittenberg,  settled  for  the 
time  at  Jiiterbok,  where,  being  a  "  hustler "  of  undeniable 
ability,  he  was  soon  driving  a  roaring  trade.  Luther  saw  and 
seized  his  opportunity  ;  he  posted  on  the  door  of  the  castle  church 
at  Wittenberg  the  celebrated  "  Ninety-five  Theses,"  contending 
that  the  Pope  can  only  grant  indulgence  for  what  he  and  the 
law  of  the  Church  have  imposed,  that  true  repentance  absolves 
the  sinner  without  any  papal  confirmation,  yet  upon  the  whole 
attacking  rather  the  irresponsible  babble  of  such  hucksters  as 
Tetzel  than  the  traffic  in  which  they  were  engaged.  In  fourteen 
days  the  news  of  this  bold  act  had  spread  throughout  Germany  ; 
Luther  had  made Jiimself  [famous,  and  the  great  struggle  of  the 
Reformation  was  begun.  In  May  of  next  year,  in  Solutions, 
he  took  a  furtherTstep,  denying  the  scriptural  authority  for  the 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       273 

sacrament  of  penance  with  auricular  confession  and  expiatory 
acts,  and  contending  that  absolution  may  be  conveyed  to  a 
penitent  not  merely  by  an  ordained  priest  but  by  any  brother 
Christian.  The  pamphlet  ended  with  an  appeal  to  the  Pope  : 
"  Give  me  life  or  death,  accept  or  reject  me  as  you  will."  That 
dignitary,  not  much  concerned,  ordered  Staupitz,  vicar-general 
of  the  Augustinians,  to  "  quiet  the  man  down  "  ;  but  later  in  the 
year  Luther  was  formally  cited  to  appear  within  sixty  days 
before  a  tribunal  for  the  trial  of  heretics  at  Rome,  and  the 
Elector  Frederick  was  required  to  surrender  this  "  child  of  the 
devil  "  to  the  papal  legate.  This  Frederick  would  not  do,  and  he 
required  a  pledge  of  immunity  on  Luther's  behalf  before  allowing 
him  to  attend  the  Diet  at  Augsburg  and  meet  Caietan,  the  Pope's 
Legate.  Luther  met  Caietan,  but  refused  to  retract,  and, 
suspecting  treachery,  fled  back  to  Wittenberg.  His  excom- 
munication was  now  inevitable,  and  in  November  of  the  same 
year  (1518)  he  published  a  solemn  and  formal  appeal  from  the 
Pope  (whose  jurisdiction  he  thus  repudiated)  to  a  General 
Council  representative  of  all  professed  Christians.  With  a  man 
of  Luther's  courage  and  impetuosity,  the  development  of  his 
destructive  programme,  up  to,  and  indeed  far  beyond,  its  logical 
conclusion,  could  now  be  merely  a  matter  of  time.  It  is  therefore 
unnecessary  to  trace  in  detail  the  dramatic  episodes  of  his 
career  during  the  next  four  or  five  years — the  disputation  with 
Eck  at  Leipsic,  the  alliance  with  the  Humanists,  the  appeal  to 
the  Nobility,  the  burning  of  the  Papal  decretals,  the  heroic 
ordeal  of  the  Diet  of  Worms,  the  secret  flight  and  seclusion  in  the 
Wartburg,  where  for  a  time  his  powerful  mind  seems  to  have 
suffered  partial  eclipse.  His  conception  of  the  papal  supremacy, 
once  its  absolute  validity  had  been  challenged,  rapidly  descended 
from  the  phase  where  he  conceded  a  sort  of  presidential  function, 
to  that  in  which  he  set  himself  to  answer  the  "  Bull  of  Anti- 
Christ."  Twenty-five  years  later,  launching  his  last  thunderbolt 
— the  pamphlet  Against  the  Popedom  at  Rome,  instituted  by 
the  Devil — his  opening  clause  gives  the  Pontiff  the  title  of  "  the 
most  hellish  Father."  His  repudiation  of  the  sacrificial  con- 
ception of  the  Mass,  and  of  celibacy,  the  root-principles  of 
medieval  Catholicism,  was  no  doubt  suggested  by  the  rationalistic 
18 


274  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

tone  increasingly  prevalent  in  Wittenberg,  and  indeed  throughout 
Germany.  Only  those  exceptional  persons  who  had  the  gift  of 
continence  should,  he  rightly  held,  undertake  such  obligations. 
For  himself,  he  found  at  length  that  he  had  not  this  gift :  as  a 
free  man  he  could  not  be  bound  by  vows  made  in  ignorance. 
He  married,  as  we  all  know ;  and  it  was  perhaps  the  most 
courageous  act  of  a  dauntless  career. 

Much  more  difficult  is  the  task  of  defining  the  constructive 
element  of  Luther's  work,  but  a  constructive  element,  or  perhaps 
rather  a  conservative  one,  it  undoubtedly  possessed.  His 
first  idea  seems  to  have  been  to  replace  the  authority  of  the 
Curia,  as  a  final  arbiter  in  questions  of  discipline  or  of  doctrine, 
by  a  Council  representative  of  the  consensus  of  Christendom. 
Following  Huss  in  this  matter,  he  maintained  the  existence 
of  a  Universal  Church,  composed  of  all  sincere  believers,  even 
those  who,  like  the  Eastern  community,  had  long  been  severed 
from  the  Catholic  hierarchy.  This  dream  of  a  representative 
Council  of  Christendom  of  course  proved  impracticable  ;  in 
1725  (set.  41),  Luther  stigmatised  as  "  a  devilish  perversion  of 
the  truth  "  Zwingli's  contention  that  the  sacramental  bread 
should  be  regarded  as  a  mere  symbol  of  the  body  of  Christ. 
Luther  adhered  to  the  literal  interpretation  of  the  saying,  "  This 
is  my  body,"  maintaining  on  this  point  a  position  which  I 
for  one  find  indistinguishable  from  that  of  the  orthodox 
Catholics.  At  the  Marburg  Conference,  unity  of  a  sort  was 
attained  on  other  points  with  the  Swiss  reformers,  but  Luther 
steadfastly  declined  to  regard  them  as  "  brothers  in  Christ." 
Here,  as  in  many  respects,  Luther  proved  false  to  his  own 
principle  ;  he  had  championed  the  right  of  private  judgment, 
but  showed  small  patience  with  those  whose  conclusions  did 
not  coincide  with  his  own.  Renouncing  the  dream  of  external 
unity — for  the  tendency  was  everywhere  towards  disruption — 
yet  feeling  the  indispensability  of  someobjective  seat  of  authority, 
he  had  no  choice  but  to  rest  his  case  upon  the  infallibility  of 
the  inspired  Word  of  God.  By  his  translation  of  the  New  and 
Old  Testaments  into  the  German  version,  which  achieved 
an  instant  and  widespread  popularity,  he  proved  the  genuine- 
ness of  his  conviction  that  his  own  interpretation  of  their 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      275 

purport  must  ultimately  prevail.  Thus  he  supplied  the  only 
possible  foundation  for  the  new  democratic  evangelicalism, 
which,  in  one  form  or  another,  has  for  four  centuries  held, 
and  still  in  a  measure  holds,  the  field.  And  by  his  own  powerful 
example,  his  vindication  of  the  dignity  of  secular  activities, 
his  preaching,  his  controversial  pamphlets,  his  appeals  to 
dignitaries,  his  pastoral  reforms  and  visitations,  his  great  war- 
songs  of  the  Reformation,  he  welded  the  inchoate  impulses  of 
religious  nationalism  into  at  least  provisional  unity  and  form. 
It  is  refreshing  to  turn  from  the  combative  turbulence 
of  Luther's  career  to  the  serene  power,  the  gracious  catholicity 
of  the  sage  of  Concord.  Emerson  was  not  driven  by  super- 
stitious terror  into  the  Unitarian  ministry,  as  Luther  had  been 
driven  to  the  adoption  of  monastic  vows.  Himself  the  son  of 
a  minister,  he  dreamed  for  a  time  of  becoming  a  novelist,  a 
poet,  even  a  painter.  The  grief  of  his  mother  when  his  brother 
William  returned  from  Germany  a  sceptic,  and  forsook  theology 
for  law,  confirmed  his  own  final  choice  of  the  ministry,  and 
he  would  never  have  left  it  "  could  he  but  have  had  liberty 
always  to  tell  the  highest  thing  he  knew,  and  to  conform  his 
practice  in  all  respects  with  his  ideal."  Of  the  formative 
influences  upon  his  mental  development,  one  worthy  of  special 
mention  is  his  great  admiration  of  Channing,  "  whose  peculiar 
secret  was  the  exaltation  of  morality  into  religion  by  enthusiasm 
for  the  right  and  good."  His  early  sermons  are  said  to  have 
been,  upon  the  whole,  not  remarkable  ;  in  them  he  adhered 
to  the  conventional  Bible  phraseology.  Nor  was  he  a  striking 
success  in  parochial  work ;  excess  of  delicacy,  mistrust  of 
ordinary  didactic  methods  no  doubt  stood  in  his  way.  On  one 
occasion  his  diffidence  was  thus  grimly  rebuked  by  a  parishioner 
disappointed  in  the  expectation  of  spiritual  sustenance  :  "  Young 
man,  if  you  don't  know  your  business,  you  had  better  go  home  !  " 
In  or  about  his  twenty-ninth  year,  difficulties  arose  between 
Emerson  and  his  Boston  congregation  with  regard  to  the  Lord's 
Supper,  which  he  would  not  accept  as  an  obligatory  rite.  "  If 
I  believed  that  it  was,  I  should  not  adopt  it.  I  will  love  him 
as  a  glorified  friend,  and  not  pay  him  a  stiff  sign  of  respect 
as  men  do  to  those  whom  they  fear."  The  controversy  seems 


276  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

to  have  been  conducted  on  both  sides  without  acrimony,  but 
it  ended  in  Emerson's  resignation  of  his  charge.  He  continued, 
however,  for  another  fifteen  years  to  accept  occasional  invita- 
tions to  preach  in  various  churches  of  the  Unitarian  persuasion. 
In  this,  I  hold  that  he  was  justified — in  the  first  place  because 
Unitarians  profess  to  allow  their  preachers  perfect  freedom  in 
regard  to  dogma  ;  and  secondly,  because,  with  Emerson,  affirma- 
tion in  such  matters  always  took  precedence  of  negation. 
Strictly  speaking,  he  cannot,  it  is  true,  in  his  maturity,  be 
called  a  theist ;  not,  however,  because  belief  in  God  was  for 
him  a  chimerical  notion,  but  because  the  personal  category 
seemed  to  him  altogether  inadequate,  even  as  a  symbol  of  the 
absolute  Reality.1  And  with  regard  to  Christianity,  the  same 
reluctance  to  emphasise  the  negative  conclusions  of  his  mind 
is  evident.  In  Man  Thinking  (1837)  he  says  :  "  The  man 
has  never  lived  who  can  feed  us  for  ever."  The  divinity  of 
Christ  was,  for  him,  not  a  unique  prodigy,  bat  the  realisation 
of  a  potentiality  common  to  all  mankind.  It  was  a  "  doctrine 
of  the  Reason,"  falsified  when  adopted  as  a  formula  of  the 
prosaic  Understanding.  For  him  the  guarantee  of  truth  was 
always  that  the  soul  accepts  it  gladly,  without  constraint  and 
without  subservience. 

Freed  from  his  ministerial  charge,  Emerson,  now  nearing 
the  close  of  his  twenty-ninth  year,  resolved  on  a  visit  to  the  old 
world.  He  sailed  on  Christmas  day  of  1832  for  Malta,  crossed 
to  Sicily,  made  the  acquaintance  of  Landor  in  Rome,  visited 
Paris,  and  reached  London  late  in  July  of  1833.  Of  his  memor- 
able pilgrimage  to  Craigenputtock,  Thomas  Carlyle  shall  speak 
for  himself  :  "  We  kept  him  one  night  and  then  he  left  us. 
I  saw  him  go  up  the  hill.  I  didn't  go  with  him  to  see  him 
descend.  I  preferred  to  watch  him  mount  and  vanish  like  an 
angel."  On  his  return  he  soon  found  himself  in  great  request 
both  as  lecturer  and  preacher,  his  first  lectures  being  mainly 
on  scientific  topics.  He  lived  for  a  time  with  his  mother  near 
Boston,  but  after  his  marriage,  in  1836,  moved  to  Concord.  The 
transition  from  theology  to  philosophy — to  seership,  one  ought 
rather  to  say,  for  he  was  no  dialectician — was  now  rapidly 

1  To  a  cousin  he  once  wrote,  "  When  I  speak  of  God  I  prefer  to  say  It." 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE     277 

proceeding  ;  and  in  this  the  effect  of  his  European  tour  is  evident 
enough.  "  Not  only  had  his  views  expanded  and  his  mind 
imbibed  new  ideas,  but  he  had  profited  by  detachment  from  the 
concerns  of  a  limited  community  and  an  isolated  church.  .  .  . 
His  thoughts  committed  to  paper  on  shipboard  have  a  largeness 
and  liberty  not  attained  by  him  before.  He  also  began  to  feel 
dimly  that  he  might  have  a  message  to  deliver  to  Europe  as 
well  as  to  America."  In  the  year  of  his  marriage  appeared 
Nature,  the  first  maturely  Emersonian  utterance,  "  the  first 
in  which  he  came  forward  speaking  as  one  having  authority." 
It  attracted  little  attention,  yet  was  "  a  seed  implanted  in  the 
crumbling  New  England  theology,  whose  unnoticed  expansion 
had  force  enough  to  shatter  the  whole  fabric."  Man  is  revealed, 
not  as  the  mere  creation  of  an  extra-mundane  despot,  nor  as  a 
mere  part  of  nature,  an  effect  simply,  but  as  causal,  creative, 
also,  evil  being  the  price  paid  for  his  potential  infinitude.  In 
method  this  work,  like  all  its  successors,  was  not  strictly  philo- 
sophical but  poetical,  not  dialectical  but  affirmative.  Emerson 
wrote  down  his  thoughts  as  they  came  to  him  without  any 
pretence  of  a  formal  justification.  "  I  do  not  know  what  argu- 
ments are,"  he  said,  "  in  reference  to  any  expression  of  a  thought. 
I  delight  in  telling  what  I  think.  But  if  you  ask  me  how  I  dare 
say  so,  or  why  it  is  so,  I  am  the  most  helpless  of  men."  It  was 
his  custom  to  take  solitary  morning  walks,  "  hunting  thoughts 
as  a  boy  hunts  butterflies."  These  thoughts  were  at  once  written 
down  in  his  "  Thought  Book,"  and  most  of  his  Essays  obviously 
consist  of  detached  paragraphs,  pieced  or  strung  together 
without  any  apparent  logical  sequence.1  Nature,  however, 
seems  to  have  been  written  consecutively  "  in  the  heat  and 
happiness  of  a  genuine  inspiration."  He  hated  writing  to 
an  occasion  or  on  a  prescribed  subject.  "  Such  writing,"  he 
said,  "  is  at  its  origin  derived  and  a  peril.  Out  of  your  own  self 
should  come  your  theme  ;  and  only  thus  can  your  genius  be 
your  friend." 

It  is  essential  to    the  understanding    of    Emerson's   aims 
and  achievement  to  bear  in  mind  that  his  genius  was  no  isolated 

1  "  Do  not  put  hinges  to  your  work  to  make  it  cohere  "  (R.  W.  E.  to  C.  J. 
Woodbury). 


278  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

phenomenon.  New  ideas  were  in  the  air,  and  exceptional 
personalities  abounded.  One  may  mention  among  his  con- 
temporaries the  names  of  Lincoln,  Parker,  Lowell,  Channing, 
Margaret  Fuller,  Alcott,  Hawthorne,  Thoreau.  The  magnetic 
personality  and  the  quickly  growing  repute  of  Emerson  attracted 
to  his  Concord  home  a  host  of  cranks  and  enthusiasts — aboli- 
tionists, Platonists,  vegetarians,  Pestalozzians,  communists — 
whose  naive  efforts  to  capture  him  for  their  own  particular 
panaceas  were  gently  but  firmly  repulsed.  Invited  by  Alcott 
to  join  his  luckless  community  at  "  Fruitlands,"  Emerson  replied 
that  he  "  must  submit  to  the  degradation  of  owning  bank-stock 
and  seeing  poor  men  suffer."  In  his  ministerial  days  he  had, 
however,  been  one  of  the  first  to  place  his  pulpit  at  the  disposal 
of  anti-slavery  preachers.  And  it  is  recorded  that  he  tried, 
presumably  without  permanent  success,  to  institute  common 
meals  in  his  household.  His  advocacy  of  the  cause  of  negro 
emancipation  was  firm  and  consistent ;  more  than  once  he 
publicly  championed  the  cause,  and  incurred  a  very  hostile 
reception. 

In  default  of  a  better  classification,  Emerson  must,  I  suppose, 
be  labelled  moralist,  for  he  aims,  by  awakening  and  emancipating 
the  intellect,  at  the  liberation  of  the  will.  But  he  has  no  system 
cut  and  dried  ;  he  desires  no  disciples  ;  mistrusts  all  negations, 
hence  deals  not  in  prohibitions.  A  born  individualist,  his  virile 
conscience  approves  all  actions  which  bear  the  stamp  of  genuine 
self-expression.  His  limitless  tolerance  must  have  sorely  puzzled 
his  earnest  friends,  the  apostles  of  the  "  Newness  "  ;  it  was,  we 
know,  a  stumbling-block  to  his  lifelong  confidant,  Carlyle.  Of  a 
Baptist  minister,  who,  after  hearing  him  lecture,  prayed  that 
the  audience  might  be  delivered  from  ever  hearing  "  such  tran- 
scendental nonsense "  again,  Emerson,  inquiring  his  name, 
remarked,  "  He  seems  a  very  conscientious,  plain-spoken  man." 
Frugal  to  the  verge  of  asceticism  himself,  he  clearly  saw  the 
futility  of  exacting  any  such  standard  from  the  gross  generality 
of  mankind.  "  Nature  comes  eating  and  drinking  and  sinning. 
Her  darlings,  the  great,  the  strong,  the  beautiful,  are  not  children 
of  our  law,  do  not  come  out  of  the  Sunday  school,  never  weigh 
their  food,  nor  punctually  keep  the  commandments.  If  we 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      279 

would  be  strong  with  her  strength  we  must  not  harbour  such 
disconsolate  consciences."  In  Politics  (written  an.  set.  41)  he 
expressed  surprise  that  no  one  had  steadily  denied  the  law  on  the 
ground  of  his  own  moral  nature.  But  his  faith  in  collective 
action,  always  weak  by  reason  of  his  predominant  individualism, 
was  restored  somewhat  by  realisation  of  the  impotency  of  other 
than  organised  attacks  upon  such  institutions  as  slavery.  His 
superiority  to  the  plane  of  the  formal  moralist  is  also  evident 
from  his  endorsement  of  war.  The  Civil  War  had  greatly 
impoverished  him,  by  reducing  the  sale  of  his  works,  the  demand 
for  lectures,  and  the  returns  from  his  investments.  Yet  he 
wrote  to  Carlyle  :  "  I  shall  always  respect  war  hereafter.  The 
waste  of  life,  the  dreary  havoc  of  comfort  and  time  are  overpaid 
by  the  vistas  it  opens  of  Eternal  Life,  Eternal  Law,  reconstruct- 
ing and  upholding  Society." 

Matthew  Arnold  has  dubbed  Emerson  "  the  friend  and 
aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  Pretty,  no  doubt ; 
but  I  question  whether  Emerson  would  have  relished  the  verdict. 
He  admired  Montaigne  as  well  as  Plato.  Spirit  is  a  large  word — 
too  often  applied  to  a  small  and  narrow  thing.  "It  is  not 
enough,"  Emerson  would  have  said,  "  to  have  your  head  among 
the  stars.  You  must  keep  your  feet  firmly  planted  on  the 
earth." 

"  I  unsettle  all  things,"  he  declares.  "  No  facts  are  to  me 
sacred,  none  are  profane ;  I  simply  experiment."  This  is  the 
true  Emerson,  the  Emerson  who,  as  has  been  well  said,1  gives 
and  maintains  to  us,  by  the  stimulus  of  his  high  intimations, 
not  himself  merely — others  can  do  that  much — but  .  .  .  our- 
selves. 

Although  Emerson  was  a  man  who  thought  much  of  the 
future,  lived  largely  in  and  for  it,  and  will  doubtless  receive 
its  homage,  he  was  not  by  temperament  and  character  a  dis- 
tinctively modern  type.  His  virtue  has  an  antique  flavour 
about  it,  reminds  one  of  Plato,  of  Epictetus,  or  of  Plotinus. 
Ernest  Renan,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  modern  of  the  moderns  : 
versatile,  familiar,  he  has  not  a  trace  of  the  Emersonian  aloof- 
ness, yet  combines  by  a  sort  of  miracle  with  his  thorough- 

1  C.  J.  Woodbury,  Talks  with  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 


280  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

going  relativity  of  method  an  unswerving  fidelity  to  the  loftiest 
idealism  of  aim  and  conviction.  When  the  painful  straggle 
against  his  growing  scepticism  had  terminated  in  definite 
withdrawal  from  the  ecclesiastical  career,  which  he  had  chosen 
largely  in  deference  to  his  mother's  desire,  he  found  himself 
in  a  strange  and  embarrassing  position.  A  theologian  with 
no  theology,  a  specialist  in  Semitic  religious  lore  with  no  formal 
religion,  a  voluntarily  unfrocked  priest  of  twenty-three  !  To 
justify,  by  the  exercise  of  his  unique  faculties  of  historical 
analysis  and  vivid  reconstruction  of  the  past,  his  isolation  from 
the  dogmatic  fold,  became  inevitably  the  purpose  of  his  career. 
This,  however,  was  only  the  negative  and  therefore  preliminary 
portion  of  his  task.  Throughout  life  he  kept  a  vigilant 
watch  for  indications  of  the  future  prospects  of  religion,  and 
strove  without  ceasing  to  purify  its  permanent  essence  from 
the  accretions  of  myth  and  fable.  In  a  sense,  therefore,  he 
remained  a  priest  to  the  end ;  rather,  perhaps,  in  ceasing  to 
be  a  priest  he  became  a  prophet  and  a  pioneer.  A  very  modern 
prophet  withal,  one  wholly  devoid  of  spiritual  pose  or  austerity, 
human  to  the  core  of  him,  brilliant,  playful,  ironical.  His 
didactic  aim  is  masked  by  the  perfection  of  his  artistry  :  he 
was  too  tactful  to  allow  himself  to  preach.  But  it  reveals 
itself  in  his  evident  appreciation  of  such  characters  as  Marcus 
Aurelius,  in  the  purity,  one  might  almost  say  the  sanctity,  of 
his  own  life,  in  his  beautiful  devotion  to  his  mother  and  to 
Henriette  Kenan,  and  in  such  utterances  as  the  following  : 
"  Duty,  with  its  incalculable  philosophical  consequences,  in 
imposing  itself  upon  all,  resolves  all  doubts,  harmonises  all 
oppositions,  and  serves  as  basis  for  the  rebuilding  of  all  that 
reason  destroys  or  allows  to  perish.  .  .  .  He  who  shall  have 
chosen  the  good  will  have  been  the  true  sage." 

Renan  early  recognised  his  own  limitations  :  he  was  only 
twenty  years  old  when  he  wrote  to  his  sister  :  "  I  am  only  fit 
for  one  sort  of  life — a  life  of  study  and  reflection,  retired  and 
tranquil."  Twenty-six  years  later,  in  1869,  he  presented  him- 
self to  the  electors  of  Meaux  on  behalf  of  peace  and  political 
reconstruction,  and  again  in  1871.  But,  though  described  as  an 
"  irresistible  orator,"  he  was  on  both  occasions  unsuccessful, 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      281 

and  this  tardy  and  ephemeral  ambition  did  not  recur.  In  the 
first  days  of  his  apostasy  he  for  a  short  time  studied  natural 
science  with  Berthelot,  and  the  scientific  ideal  henceforth 
permeated,  though  it  hardly  dominated,  all  his  literary  activities. 
He  settled  in  Paris  with  Henriette,  and  produced  a  series  of 
works  of  which  I  must  content  myself  with  naming  the  titles. 
His  Histoire  Generate  des  Langues  Semitiques  won  him  the  Volney 
prize  ;  in  his  Etudes  d'Histoire  Rcligieuse  he  criticises  the  work 
of  David  Strauss,  pointing  out  the  misleading  effect  of  his 
Hegelianism,  and  drawing  a  clear  distinction  between  the  Christ 
of  the  Gospels,  largely  an  ideal  conception,  and  the  historic 
personality  of  Jesus  ;  in  Essais  de  Morale  et  de  Critique  he  claims 
to  be  the  true  friend  of  religion,  the  rescuer  of  its  imperishable 
essence  from  the  ephemeral  forms  that  conceal  and  mar  it ; 
his  Translation  of  Job  inspired  the  panegyric  on  Duty  quoted 
above  ;  that  of  the  Song  of  Solomon,  which  he  believed  to  be  a 
drama  enacted  with  music  at  Hebrew  weddings,  was  the  occasion 
for  the  following  characteristic  utterance  :  "  The  faith  in  the 
resurrection  and  the  faith  in  the  Messiah  have  produced  more 
great  deeds  than  the  exact  science  of  the  grammarian.  But  it 
is  the  glory  of  the  modern  spirit  to  refrain  from  sacrificing,  one 
to  another,  the  lawful  requirements  of  human  nature."  In 
1860,  Renan  (set.  37)  was  sent  by  the  Emperor  to  examine  and 
report  on  certain  ancient  sites  in  Phrcnicia.  The  expedition 
was  a  memorable  one,  for  him  and  for  posterity.  To  it  he  owed 
the  loss  of  his  best  friend  and  loyal  helpmate,  Henriette  Renan  4 
to  it  the  world  owes  the  final  conception  of  his  most  character- 
istic if  not  greatest  work,  the  Vie  de  Jesus.  In  close  communion 
with  the  sister  who  so  loyally  shared  his  views  and  sympathised 
with  his  aspirations,  the  book  was  planned  and  largely  written 
among  the  hills  and  valleys  of  Palestine.  Its  undue  reliance 
upon  the  Fourth  Gospel  (the  grounds  of  Kenan's  confidence  in 
which  seem  to  me  rather  vague  and  fanciful)  has  no  doubt  in  a 
measure  detracted  from  its  historical  value.  Renan  has  also  been 
severely  censured  for  his  apparent — only  apparent — reflection 
upon  the  good  faith  of  Jesus  in  the  matter  of  the  miracles. 
Belief  in  miracles  was,  for  him,  f rankly  impossible  ;  he  had,  how- 
ever, to  account^for  the  fact  that  they  were  attributed  to  Jesus, 


282  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and  that  he  seems  to  have  accepted,  though  with  signs  of  distaste 
and  reluctance,  the  claims  made  on  his  behalf.  Renan  did 
not  dogmatise  on  the  matter  ;  he  merely  intimated  his  opinion 
that  it  was  more  likely  that  some  vague  rumours  had  been 
exaggerated,  even  that  some  collusion  had  been  practised, 
than  that  the  prodigies  in  question  had  actually  occurred.  His 
particular  explanations  may  or  may  not  be  valid  ;  the  principle 
upon  which  they  were  based  is  perfectly  sound.  It  is  evident 
that  the  motive  for  writing  this  book  was,  in  part,  the  correction 
of  the  a  priorism  which  he  had  censured  in  that  of  David 
Strauss.1  The  real  importance  of  Kenan's  Vie  de  Jesus  lies  in 
the  fact  that,  with  all  its  inevitable,  and  for  the  most  part  un- 
avoidable, faults  or  deficiencies,  it  brings  home  to  the  popular 
imagination  with  extraordinary  power  and  charm  the  naturalist 
conception  which  is  its  basis  and  motif.  It  makes  the  reader 
feel  the  immense  superiority  of  Jesus,  the  aspiring  and  con- 
quering man  (homme  incomparable),  to  Jesus  the  Demigod. 
"  No  saint  in  his  cell,  no  Crusader,  was  ever  more  fervently 
haunted  by  Christ  Jesus  than  this  unfrocked  Churchman,  this 
sceptical  archaeologist,  busied  with  the  details  of  a  scientific 
mission."  His  conception  perhaps  erred  on  the  side  of 
mildness,  was  a  little  invertebrate — and  here  we  trace  the 
restraining  influence  of  the  gentle  Henriette.  Years  after  that 
influence  was  withdrawn,  in  the  Antichrist,  Renan — a  bitterer, 
disillusioned  Renan — wrote  :  "  Who  knows  ?  The  image 
of  the  Gospel  may  be  false.  Jesus  may  have  been  the  centre 
of  a  group  more  pedantic,  more  scholastic,  nearer  to  the  Scribes 
and  Pharisees  than  the  Evangelists  would  have  us  believe." 

In  1862,  Renan  received,  on  the  Emperor's  initiative,  the 
Chair  of  Semitic  Languages  at  the  College  de  France.  Catholic 
interest,  and  perhaps  Court  influence,  had  delayed  but  could 
not  prevent  the  appointment.  Renan's  liberalism  immediately 
came  under  suspicion ;  the  Catholics  were  also  up  in  arms. 
There  was  a  storm  of  interruptions  from  both  parties  on  the 
occasion  of  his  inaugural  address.  He  had  expressed  himself 
rather  freely  on  the  religious  and  political  problems  which 

1  "  Ever  since  his  year  of  spiritual  crisis,  Renan  had  pondered  in  his  heart 
a  Life  of  Jesus,  unlike  any  yet  written  "  (Madame  James  Darmesteter). 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      283 

occupied  his  mind,  and  both  parties  found  occasion  for  offence. 
He  was  suspended  from  his  professorate,  and  in  1864  (after 
the  appearance  of  his  Vie  de  Jesus)  deprived  of  it  altogether. 
In  1870  it  was  restored.  The  notoriety  which,  after  this  affair 
of  the  professorate,  suddenly  overwhelmed  him,  caused  him 
to  be  regarded  as  a  champion  and  martyr  of  liberalism,  political 
as  well  as  theological,  and  was  no  doubt  the  main  cause  of  his 
keen  but  short-lived  political  ambition.  The  war  with  Germany 
was  hateful  to  him  as  a  lover  of  German  culture ;  the  com- 
munistic debauch  of  blood  and  frenzy  broke  his  heart.  From 
his  avenue  of  Versailles,  with  Paris  flaming  on  the  horizon, 
Renan  developed  his  thesis  of  the  function  of  the  elect  and 
his  hypothesis  of  conditional  immortality.  The  masses  do  not 
count.  They  are  to  be  harnessed  and  driven  by  a  syndicate 
of  Daevas  or  tyrant-sages,  commanding  the  resources  of  Science. 
But  this  priestly  mood  proved  transient ;  the  old  faith  in 
progress  revived ;  from  the  study  of  the  vain  pride  and  ex- 
clusiveness  of  Gnosticism  he  learned  anew  the  fallacies  of  the 
oligarchic  theory.  In  one  of  his  latest  works  (Philosophic 
Dramas)  he  wrote  :  "I  love  Prospero,  but  I  do  not  love  the 
men  who  would  replace  him  on  the  throne.  Caliban,  improved 
by  power,  is  more  to  my  mind."  From  first  to  last  Renan 
persisted  in  his  claim  to  be  regarded  as  the  conservator  of 
Religion.  "  Notre  critique  a  plus  fait  pour  la  conservation  de 
la  religion  que  toutes  les  apologies.  J'ai  tout  critique  et,  quoi 
qu'on  en  dise,  j'ai  tout  maintenu."  And  he  was,  if  not  an 
optimist,  at  least  an  absolute  meliorist,  a  believer  in  cosmic 
progress.  "  Malgre  ses  immenses  defauts,  ce  monde  reste 
apres  tout  une  reuvre  de  bonte  infinie."  Was  he  then,  upon 
the  whole,  a  theist  ? — a  consistent  one  he  certainly  was  not. 
I  do  not  know,  and  I  do  not  think  he  knew  either.  It  was 
for  him  a  dream,  which  might  (or  might  not)  come  true.  But 
there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  his  transcendentalism.  "It  is  in 
the  ideal  world,  and  there  only,  that  all  the  beliefs  of  the  natural 
religion  have  their  legitimacy.  But,  I  cannot  too  often  repeat 
it,  it  is  the  idea  that  exists,  and  the  transient  reality  which 
only  appears  to  be." 

V.  Recapitulation. — In  order   to  complete  our  long    task, 


284  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

we  have  now  to  review  the  subject  of  Purpose  in  the  light  of 
the  information  gleaned  from  the  preceding  sections.  The 
first  point  to  which  I  would  call  attention  is,  that  Purpose 
presents  itself  under  two  main  aspects — formal  and  substantial. 
The  formal  aspect  of  Purpose  is  that  which  concerns  its  develop- 
ment as  a  factor  of  the  consciousness  of  its  exponent ;  the 
substantial  aspect  concerns  its  practical  manifestation  in  life 
and  activity.  The  formal  or  subjective  aspect  is  logically 
prior  to  the  substantial  or  objective  aspect  of  Purpose  ;  but, 
genetically,  the  rule  is  that  a  man  finds  himself  more  or  less 
fully  committed  to  his  task  years  before  he  has  attained  to 
that  degree  of  self-consciousness  and  autonomy  which  true 
Purpose  implies.  Specially  true  is  this  rule  with  regard  to 
men  of  action,  the  most  primitive,  therefore  the  most  in- 
stinctive of  our  four  types.  Thus,  with  men  like  Caesar,  we 
find  their  first  steps  dictated  by  a  mere  personal  craving  for 
power  and  the  spontaneous  exercise  of  an  inborn  gift  for 
achieving  popularity ;  conscious  devotion  to  large  impersonal 
aims  comes  much  later,  if  it  come  at  all.  More  or  less  analo- 
gous are  the  cases  of  Charlemagne,  Drake  (whose  purpose 
remained  rudimentary  to  the  end),  Nelson  (to  some  extent, 
though  the  merely  instinctive  stage  was  here  of  brief  duration), 
and  Lincoln.  The  last-named  is  as  fine  an  example  of  the 
gradual  development  from  a  mere  instinctive  ambition  to 
excel  to  the  definite  formulation  of  a  general,  and  finally  of 
a  specific,  political  aim,  as  could  well  be  desired.  With  William 
the  Silent,  on  the  other  hand,  although  his  purpose  was  based 
upon  instinctive  tolerance  or  sympathy,  its  actual  initiation 
was  preceded  by  its  conscious  and  formal  adoption.  He 
therefore  followed  the  logical,  not  the  empirical,  order,  and  is 
an  exception  to  the  rule.  Much  the  same  can  be  said  of 
Richelieu,  whose  decisive  intervention  in  national  affairs 
would  seem  to  have  been  the  direct  outcome  of  a  carefully 
elaborated  plan.  But  Richelieu,  great  man  of  action  as  he 
was,  is  in  many  ways  atypical.  Instinct  and  self-consciousness 
(the  substantial  and  the  formal  factors  of  his  genius)  developed 
side  by  side.  Among  members  of  the  aesthetic  group,  instinct 
predominates  in  the  determination  of  the  life-work  of  Titian, 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE       285 

Mozart,  Scott,  and  Turner.  Dante  and  Goethe,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  in  the  days  of  their  maturity  poets  of  clearly- 
defined  and  self-limited  aim.  Leonardo,  however,  lacking  the 
compelling  motive  of  a  strong  desire  for  fame,  largely  dis- 
sipated his  power  in  the  indulgence  of  his  ever-growing  in- 
tellectual curiosity.  Among  members  of  the  intellectual 
group,  the  rule  would  seem  to  be  that  with  scientific  dis- 
coverers (Harvey,  Newton,  Darwin)  the  substantial  aspect 
of  purpose  is,  upon  the  whole,  the  more  conspicuous ;  with 
philosophers  (Descartes,  Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Kant,  Hegel), 
although  their  work  has  no  doubt  an  instinctive  basis,  the 
formal  element  soon  appears  and  begins  to  take  the  lead.  Thus 
Descartes,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  in  one  day  deliberately 
comes  to  terms  with  his  own  genius,  assigning  to  it  the  task 
in  which  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  remained  absorbed.  And 
lastly,  among  members  of  the  ethico -religious  group,  whose 
domain  is  the  Will,  as  that  of  the  philosopher  is  the  Mind  of 
Man,  it  is  a  rule  with  but  few  exceptions,  that  instinct  has 
to  be  deliberately  conquered  and  set  aside  before  their  proper 
work  is  or  can  be  begun.  Thus  Christ  would  seem  to  have 
renounced  worldly  ambition ;  Paul  his  instinctive  prejudice 
against  the  new  religion ;  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Gregory,  their 
love  of  solitary  contemplation;  Augustine,  his  pride  of  intellect 
and  sensuality ;  Mahomet,  his  allegiance  to  the  vested  interests 
of  his  tribe  in  idolatrous  institutions  ;  St.  Francis,  his  fastidious 
taste  and  the  dictates  of  his  filial  affection ;  Luther,  scholastic 
pedantry  and  faith  in  ceremonial  observances ;  Emerson,  the 
orthodoxy  of  his  Unitarianism ;  Renan,  the  strong  tendency 
of  his  docile  Breton  temperament  to  unquestioning  loyalty 
in  all  that  concerned  the  Catholic  faith.  The  path  of  the 
religious  or  ethical  reformer  must  be  entered  by  the  door  of 
conversion  : x  in  other  words,  the  formal  element  of  Purpose 
must,  for  such  men,  not  merely  exist,  but  reign  supreme. 

Closely  allied  to  this  question  of  the  role  of  conversion  is 
that  of  the  positive  and  negative,  the  creative  and  iconoclastic 
aspects  or  phases  of  Purpose.  But  before  dealing  with  this  I 

1  By  conversion  I  mean  simply  the  emergence  of  a  latent  interest  which 
suddenly  finds  itself  in  a  position  to  take  the  upper  hand. 


286  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

must  call  attention  to  the  environmental  factor — the  mimetic 
element,  which  in  its  early  stages  is  never  absent  from  a  given 
Purpose,  and  the  part  played  by  opportunity  in  rousing,  evoking, 
and  modifying  its  activity.  We  may  be  quite  sure  that  the 
example  of  Marius  was  not  lost  upon  young  Caesar,  any  more 
than  that  of  Pepin  the  Short  upon  Charlemagne  ;  for  in  both 
cases  the  course  first  adopted  points  conclusively  to  this  explan- 
ation of  its  origin.  Bichelieu's  anti-Huguenot  policy  was 
avowedly  modelled  upon  that  of  the  Cardinal  du  Perron ; 
Frederick  the  Great  learned  much,  no  doubt,  from  Voltaire, 
but  more,  if  the  truth  be  told,  from  the  father  whom  he  hated 
and  who  hated  him  ;  Goethe  was  profoundly  influenced  by  the 
kindred  genius  of  Shakespeare  ;  Scott  owed  a  strong  impulse 
to  poetry  to  his  translation  of  Goethe's  Goetz  von  Berlichingen  ; 
Flaubert's  realism  was  largely  based  on  sympathy  with  his 
father's  enthusiasm  for  science  ;  Galileo  owed  many  suggestions 
to  the  study  of  Leonardo's  manuscripts ;  Harvey's  lifelong 
interest  in  the  problem  of  the  circulation  was  directly  inspired 
by  his  intimacy  with  Fabricius ;  Leibnitz  was  profoundly 
influenced  by  the  study  of  Bacon  ;  Kant,  by  the  study  of  Hume  ; 
Darwin,  by  the  example  of  Henslow  and  the  generalisation  of 
Malthus  ;  Jesus,  by  the  teachings  of  Hillel,  Isaiah,  Daniel,  and 
John  the  Baptist ;  Marcus  Aurelius,  by  his  admiration  of  the 
Emperor  Antoninus  ;  Francis,  by  the  evangelical  work  of  Peter 
Waldo  ;  Renan,  by  the  steadfast  courage  of  his  sister  Henriette. 
These  random  instances  may  suffice  to  notify  the  great  part 
played  by  personal  influence,  the  suggestive  function  of  actual 
or  mental  association  with  the  exemplars  of  kindred  aims  and 
capacities.  The  power  of  opportunity  is  best  seen,  of  course, 
in  the  lives  of  the  great  opportunists — men  like  Richelieu, 
Cromwell,  Napoleon,  Frederick,  Lincoln,  Luther,  who  never 
act  until  their  moment  is  ripe,  or  fail  to  act  then  with  instant 
promptitude  and  ruthless  decision.  But,  in  its  degree,  this 
power  is  evident  in  the  lives  of  all  our  examples.  I  have  already 
commented  on  the  extraordinary  reluctance  of  Gregory  to 
accept  the  responsibility  of  his  genius  for  administration,  so 
clearly  divined  by  his  associates.  But,  after  all,  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  mere  opportunity  never  made  a  man  great 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      287 

unless  there  was  greatness  in  him.  We  must,  in  psychology, 
he  constantly  on  our  guard  against  a  mechanical  interpretation 
of  what  occurs  in  the  domain  of  the  human  spirit.  From  the 
psychological  point  of  view,  which  is  rapidly  superseding  the 
mechanical  and  physiological  regime  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
the  naive  acceptance  of  causality  itself  as  vulgarly  understood, 
is  regarded  with  a  certain  irony.  For  the  ultimate  validity  of 
what  might  be  called  the  impact  theory  of  causation  is  gravely 
suspect.  It  is  one  thing  to  explain  things,  and  quite  another 
to  account  for  them.  Metaphysically  speaking, — and  psycho- 
logy must  never  lose  touch  with  metaphysic, — a  man's  oppor- 
tunities are  no  doubt  of  his  own  making,  through  and  through. 
They  are  parts  of  "  that  full  concept  of  the  individual  in  which 
are  included  all  its  experiences,  together  with  all  the  attendant 
circumstances  and  the  whole  sequence  of  exterior  events."  l 

I  have  in  the  preceding  four  sections  had  frequent  occasion 
to  point  out  the  importance  of  distinguishing  between  the 
positive  and  negative,  the  creative  and  iconoclastic  aspects  of 
Purpose.  The  typical  course  of  events  would  seem  to  be,  that 
a  man  begins  by  resenting  and  combating  certain  facts  or 
opinions  against  which  his  nature  consciously,  or  at  first  only 
instinctively,  rebels.  Then,  by  degrees,  he  comes  to  recognise 
the  necessity  of  replacing  what  he  seeks  to  destroy  by  some 
analogous  institution  or  idea,  more  conformable  to  his  own 
views  of  right  or  fitness.  So,  while  still  combating  the  old, 
he  seeks  to  establish  the  new,  his  conception  of  which,  welling 
up  insensibly  from  the  depths  of  his  being,  broadens  and 
matures  with  the  growth  of  his  experience.  For  a  time  the 
two  purposes,  positive  and  negative,  may  coexist  in  approxi- 
mately equal  power  ;  his  actions  will  then  show  a  certain 
hesitancy  and  alternation  between  the  two  contrary  extremes. 
But  the  typical  development  of  Purpose  demands  a  final 
harmonisation  of  these  conflicting  tendencies,  a  merging  of 
their  opposed  mandates  into  a  rule  of  balanced  activity.  In 
this  matured  phase,  which  I  propose  to  call  the  synergic,  Purpose 
is  manifested,  not  by  an  alternation  of  positive  and  negative 

1  Liebnitz,  Summary  of  the  Discourse  on  Metaphysics,  in  Letter  to  Count 
Ernst  von  Hessen-Rheinfels.  Trans,  by  Dr.  G.  R.  Montgomery. 


288  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

essays,  but  by  actions,  each  one  of  which,  while  maintaining 
the  critical  or  destructive  element,  also  advances  the  positive. 
The  above  I  call  the  typical,  as  it  is  also  the  logical  sequence  : 
needless  to  say,  it  varies  largely  in  particular  cases.  Some- 
times, one  or  another  aspect  is  the  more  conspicuous  in  a  given 
career,  to  the  extent  of  overshadowing  the  others  altogether. 
In  highly  intuitive  natures  the  positive  phase  may  seem  to 
precede  the  negative,  or  the  latter  may  even  appear  to  be 
entirely  wanting.  Intuitive  natures  naturally  incline  to 
affirmation  :  mere  criticism  does  not  interest  them  ;  but  the 
opposition  their  affirmation  arouses  forces  them,  in  its  defence, 
to  reveal  the  destructive  implications  of  their  position.  Jesus 
and  Emerson  are  examples  of  the  postponement  of  negative 
tendencies  ;  Marcus  Aurelius,  whose  exalted  station  exempted 
him  from  opposition,  seems  to  have  had  almost  no  tendency 
to  negation.  He  certainly  disliked  Christianity,  but  there  was 
little  vehemence  or  insistence  in  his  feeling  about  it.  Negativity 
seems  to  predominate  upon  the  whole  in  Cromwell,  Frederick, 
Bacon,  Descartes,  Kant,  Luther  ;  positivity,  more  or  less,  in 
Charlemagne,  Mozart,  Scott,  Newton,  Marcus  Aurelius,  Gregory, 
Francis.  Caesar,  Lincoln,  Leibnitz,  and  Hegel  certainly  attained 
in  varying  degree  the  synergic  or  mature  phase  of  Purpose. 
But  enough  has  now  been  said  to  enable  the  reader  to  apply 
our  principle  for  himself  to  the  remaining  examples. 

Is  it  possible  to  define  in  terms  of  a  man's  age  the  typical 
development  of  his  purpose  ?  To  some  extent,  yes  ;  but  the 
periods  assigned,  although  based  on  actual  examples,  must, 
of  course,  be  considered  approximate  only,  and  will.be  liable 
to  many  exceptions.  Purpose  must  here  be  considered  in  its 
broadest  aspect,  such  considerations  as  that  of  its  positivity 
or  negativity,  its  generality  or  specificity,  being  ignored.  We 
fall  back  on  our  first  classification,  recognising  three  main 
phases  in  the  typical  development  of  Purpose — (1)  mainly  in- 
stinctive ;  (2)  wherein  the  instinctive  element  is  increasingly 
permeated  by  self-conscious  determination,  the  growth  of  the 
formal  factor  ;  and  (3)  the  period  of  mature  self-determined 
purposive  activity.  These  three  main  phases  may  be  preceded 
by  a  preliminary  phase,  daring  which  purpose,  if  it  exist  at  all 


THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PURPOSE      289 

will  be  of  more  or  less  vague  and  intermittent  character.  The 
typical  age-periods  of  these  phases  will,  I  consider,  be  as  follows  : 
(a)  Preliminary,  boyhood  and  youth,  up  to  about  the  end  of  the 
twentieth  year  ;  (1)  Instinctive  phase,  from  the  beginning  of 
the  twenty-first  to  the  end  of  the  thirtieth  year ;  (2)  Growth  of 
the  formal  factor,  end  of  the  thirtieth  to  end  of  the  forty-fourth 
year ;  (3)  Period  of  maturity,  beginning  of  the  forty-fifth  to 
end  of  the  sixty-fifth  or  sixty-eighth  year.  Of  the  preliminary 
period,  evidenced  by  the  boyish  precocity  of  Turner,  Mozart, 
Newton,  it  is  not  necessary  to  say  more  at  present.  Of  the  other 
three,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  I  assign  about  ten  years  to  the 
instinctive  phase,  about  fourteen  years  to  the  formative,  and 
about  twenty-one  (to  twenty-four)  to  the  maturity  of  Purpose. 

Within  the  first  period  (twenty-one  to  thirty)  fall  such 
developmental  landmarks  as  the  publication  of  his  first  capitulary 
by  Charlemagne  (aet.  26),  the  Italian  campaigns  of  Napoleon 
(set.  26  to  28),  the  political  debut  of  Lincoln  (aet.  28),  the  com- 
position of  Dante's  Vita  Nuova  (aet.  27  to  30),  the  writing  of 
Goetz  von  Berlichingen  by  Goethe  (set.  22),  and  his  conception 
of  Faust  (set.  25),  Scott's  annual  exploratory  raids  into  the 
Liddesdale  district  (aet.  21  to  28),  the  publication  of  Bacon's 
Temporis  Partus  Maximus  (set.  24),  Harvey's  first  independent 
physiological  investigations  (aet.  24),  Newton's  optical  dis- 
coveries (aet.  24),  the  invention  of  the  calculus  by  Leibnitz 
(set.  26  to  30),  Darwin's  voyage  on  the  Beagle  (set.  22  to  27), 
the  conversion  of  St.  Francis  (aet.  23),  and  the  ordination  of 
Luther  (aet.  23). 

Within  the  second  or  formative  period  (thirty  to  forty-four), 
fall  the  beginning  of  Charlemagne's  Saxon  war  (aet.  32),  the 
formal  initiation  of  Richelieu's  political  career  (set.  31),  the 
debut  of  Cromwell  (aet.  41),  the  maturation  of  Lincoln's  anti- 
slavery  policy  (complete  an.  aet.  41),  the  initiation  of  Dante's 
Divine  Comedy  (aet.  35),  the  ripening  of  Cervantes'  genius 
(composition  of  his  greatest  play,  an.  aet.  40),  the  self-disciplinary 
regimen  of  Goethe  (begun  aet.  £0),  the  completion  of  Bacon's 
Advancement  of  Learning  (published  aet.  44),  the  preliminary 
announcement,  in  lectures,  of  Harvey's  great  discovery  (set.  38), 
the  translation  of  Descartes'  Principles  of  Philosophy  by  Spinoza 
19 


2QO  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

(set.  31),  and  the  composition  of  his  Ethics  (complete  an.  ast.  42), 
the  formulation  of  Newton's  theory  of  Gravity  (set.  40  to  43), 
the  crystalisation  of  Kant's  philosophical  purpose  (set.  36  to  41), 
the  initiation  of  Darwin's  doubts  as  to  the  fixity  of  species 
(set.  29  to  30),  the  first  mission  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Gentiles  (set. 
33  or  35),  the  annunciatory  vision  of  Mahomet  (set.  40),  and  the 
publication  of  Luther's  Ninety-five  Theses  (set.  34). 

Within  the  last  or  maturity  period  (45  to  65  or  68)  fall  such 
happenings  as  the  composition  of  Don  Quixote  by  Cervantes 
(first  part,  set.  54  to  58  ;  second  part,  set.  68),  the  completion 
of  Bacon's  Novum  Organum  (set.  60),  the  publication  of  Harvey's 
classical  treatise  on  the  Circulation  (set.  50),  the  writing  of 
Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  (set.  45  to  57),  and  of  his  Critique 
of  Practical  Reason  (set.  64),  the  completion  of  Hegel's  Logic 
(set.  46),  the  publication  of  Darwin's  Origin  (set.  50),  the  popedom 
of  St.  Gregory  the  Great  (set.  50  to  64),  the  withdrawal  of 
Mahomet  to  Medina  (set.  53),  and  his  triumphant  return  to 
Mecca  (set.  64). 

During  this  last  period  of  its  full  activity,  Purpose  may 
be  compared  to  a  tree,  which,  having  attained  its  full  size  and 
its  definitive  form,  lives  and  thrives  for  a  number  of  years  with- 
out obvious  change.  Sooner  or  later,  however,  begins  a  slow 
but  fatal  decrease  of  vitality  ;  the  sap  rises  feebly  through  the 
gnarled  and  corroded  trunk  ;  fewer  and  fewer  green  twigs 
appear  ;  the  annual  crop  of  leaves  grows  ever  scantier  ;  here 
and  there  may  be  seen  a  shrunk  and  lifeless  bough,  which  the 
next  autumn's  gales  may  bring  to  the  ground.  So,  as  age  creeps 
upon  him,  a  man's  purpose  wanes  and  withers  :  from  looking 
forward  he  turns  in  weariness  to  the  review  of  bygone  achieve- 
ments, realising  at  last,  that,  for  weal  or  woe,  his  bolt  is  sped, 
his  share  contributed  to  that  vague  seonic  task,  which,  having 
allured  and  absorbed  the  strength  of  innumerable  souls,  for  ever 
mocks  the  dream  of  completion. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE 


Danger  and  solitude — Solitude  as  a  source  of  power 

IN  the  section  of  Francis  Galton's  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty, 
dealing  with  Criminals  and  the  Insane,  occur  the  following  ob- 
servations :  "  Passengers  nearing  London  by  the  Great  Western 
Railway  must  have  frequently  remarked  the  unusual  appearance 
of  the  crowd  of  lunatics  when  taking  their  exercise  in  the  large 
green  enclosure  in  front  of  Hanwell  Asylum.  They  almost 
without  exception  walk  apart  in  moody  isolation,  each  in  his 
own  way,  buried  in  his  own  thoughts.  It  is  a  scene  like  that 
fabled  in  Vathek's  Hall  of  Eblis.  I  am  assured  that  whenever 
two  are  seen  in  company,  it  is  either  because  their  attacks  of 
madness  are  of  an  intermittent  and  epileptic  character,  and  they 
are  temporarily  sane,  or  otherwise  that  they  are  near  recovery. 
Conversely,  the  curative  influence  of  social  habits  is  fully 
recognised,  and  they  are  promoted  by  festivities  in  the  asylums. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  great  teachers  of  all  creeds  have  made 
seclusion  a  prominent  religious  exercise.  In  short,  by  promoting 
celibacy,  fasting,  and  solitude,  they  have  done  their  best  towards 
making  men  mad,  and  they  have  always  largely  succeeded  in 
inducing  morbid  mental  conditions  among  their  followers. 

"  Floods  of  light  are  thrown  upon  the  various  incidents 
of  devotee  life,  and  also  upon  the  disgusting  and  not  other- 
wise intelligible  character  of  the  sanctimonious  scoundrel, 
by  the  everyday  experiences  of  the  madhouse.  No  professor 
of  metaphysics,  psychology,  or  religion  can  claim  to  know  the 

elements  of  what  he  teaches,  unless  he  is  acquainted  with  the 

291 


292  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

ordinary  phenomena  of  idiocy,  madness,  and  epilepsy.  He 
must  study  the  manifestations  of  disease  and  congenital  folly, 
as  well  as  those  of  sanity  and  high  intellect." 

One  might  conclude  from  this  passage,  considered  alone, 
that  the  habit  of  solitude  was  uncompromisingly  to  be  con- 
demned from  the  standpoint  of  science.  But  in  the  very  next 
section,  devoted  to  the  consideration  of  gregarious  and  slavish 
instincts,  there  are  suggestive  glimpses  of  a  contrary  point  of 
view.  "  I  propose,"  writes  the  learned  author,  "  to  discuss 
a  curious  and  apparently  anomalous  group  of  base  moral 
instincts  and  intellectual  deficiencies,  that  are  innate  rather 
than  acquired,  by  tracing  their  analogies  in  the  world  of  brutes, 
and  examining  the  conditions  through  which  they  have  been 
evolved.  They  are  the  slavish  aptitudes  from  which  the  leaders 
of  men  are  exempt,  but  which  are  characteristic  elements  in 
the  disposition  of  ordinary  persons.  The  vast  majority  of 
persons  of  our  own  race  have  a  natural  tendency  to  shrink 
from  the  responsibility  of  standing  and  acting  alone  ;  they 
exalt  the  vox  populi,  even  when  they  know  it  to  be  the  utterance 
of  a  mob  of  nobodies,  into  the  vox  Dei,  and  they  are  willing 
slaves  to  tradition,  authority,  and  custom.  The  intellectual 
deficiencies  corresponding  to  these  moral  flaws  are  shown  by 
the  rareness  of  free  and  original  thought  as  compared  with  the 
frequency  and  readiness  with  which  men  accept  the  opinions 
of  those  in  authority  as  binding  on  their  judgment.  I  shall 
endeavour  to  prove  that  the  slavish  aptitudes  in  man  are  a 
direct  consequence  of  his  gregarious  nature,  which  itself  is  a 
result  of  the  conditions  both  of  his  primeval  barbarism  and  of 
the  forms  of  his  subsequent  civilisation.  ...  I  hold  that  the 
blind  instincts  evolved  under  these  long- continued  conditions 
have  been  ingrained  into  our  breed,  and  that  they  are  a  bar  to 
our  enjoying  the  freedom  which  the  forms  of  modern  civilisa- 
tion are  otherwise  capable  of  giving  us." 

It  seems,  then,  that  if  persons  addicted  to  solitude  have 
this  in  common  with  demented  souls,  the  manfwho  is  "never 
happy  except  in  the  society  of  his  fellows,  reveals  thereby  a 
subservience  to  the  "  blind  instinct  "  of  the  common  herd. 
It  is  a  choice  of  evils — the  stigma  of  madness  or  the  reproach 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE 


293 


of  mediocrity — and  we  shall  have  presently  to  consider  to 
which  of  the  two  extremes  the  habits  of  great  men,  as  revealed 
in  their  biographies,  preponderatingly  incline. 

So  far  as  our  men  of   action  are  concerned,  I  may  say  at 
once  that  there   is  little  evidence  of  any  general  and  marked 
tendency  among   them    to  withdraw  from  society.      On    the 
contrary,  they  are  usually  at  their  best  when  their  attention 
is  most  fully  occupied  by  the  insistent  demands  of  practical 
difficulties    amid   the  hurry-scurry  and  confusion  of    critical 
events.    Dangers  which  affright,  perplexities  which  paralyse 
the  faculties  of  ordinary  men,  are  to  their  powerful  brains  but 
as  a  stimulus  calling  forth  latent  funds  of  energy  and  resource, 
of   which    they   themselves   might   otherwise   have   remained 
unaware.     It  is  precisely  in  the  qualities  needed  upon  such 
occasions,  in  soundness  of  practical  instinct,  in  self-confidence, 
originality    of    suddenly  conceived    plan,  contempt    of    mere 
precedent,  courage  and  promptitude  of  action,  that  they  excel 
their   fellow-men.      It   is   in  these   moments   of   superhuman 
stress  that  their  great  inspirations  come  to  them,  not  only,  be 
it  observed,  the  perception  of  what  is  needed  at  the  moment, 
but,  often  enough  too,  that  of  the  general  principle  determining 
their  decision,   available   thenceforth  in  all  crises  of  similar 
kind  and  scope.     Such  men  court  danger,  because,  their  great- 
ness being  of  the  reflex  type,  they  are  dependent  upon  it  for  the 
full  expansion  of  their  faculties,  for  growth  and  the  satisfaction 
which    is    invariably    associated    therewith.      In     tame    and 
monotonous  conditions  their  natures  would  become  dwarfed 
through  lack  of  the  needful  stimulus.  They  mingle  with  the  herd, 
not  because  they  share  its  defects,  but  in  order  to  reveal  their 
superiority  to  its  weaknesses  and  limitations.     There  they  find 
their  true  solitude,  the  solitude  of  pre-eminence  and  power.  There, 
too,  they  enjoy  the  tribute  of  obedience  and  the  homage  of  awe. 
Once,  when  Ceesar  was  on  the  march  in  Gaul,  his  army 
was  surprised  by  an  ambushed  force  of  the  hardy  and  ferocious 
Nervii  and  their  German  allies.     The  enemy,  60.000  in  all,  had 
been  hiding  in  a  wood  on  the  right  bank  of  the  river  Sambre. 
The  river  is  fordable  at  this  point,  and  the  concealed  barbarians, 
when  Caesar's  army,  marching  on  the  left  bank,  came  up  and 


294  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

began  to  dig  trenches  with  a  view  to  encampment,  were  out 
of  the  wood,  into  the  water,  and  upon  their  prey  almost  before 
their  appearance  had  been  realised.  The  Romans,  unhelmeted, 
unprepared,  fought  where  they  stood  as  best  they  might, 
repulsing  the  Germans ;  but  all  was  panic  and  confusion ; 
the  Nervii  had  surrounded  the  baggage,  and  the  camp-followers 
had  fled.  The  fate  of  Caesar  and  his  army  was  trembling  in 
the  balance ;  but  he  himself  had  to  be  reckoned  with,  and  his 
fierce  promptitude  turned  the  scale.  Snatching  a  shield  from 
a  soldier,  he  flew  bareheaded  to  the  front.  "  He  was  known ; 
he  addressed  the  centurions  by  their  names.  He  bade  them 
open  their  ranks  and  give  the  men  room  to  strike.  His  presence 
and  his  calmness  gave  them  back  their  confidence.  In  the 
worst  extremities  he  observes  that  soldiers  will  fight  well  under 
their  commander's  eye.  The  cohorts  formed  into  order.  The 
enemy  was  checked ;  .  .  .  the  fugitives,  ashamed  of  their 
cowardice,  rallied,  and  were  eager  to  atone  for  it.  ...  The 
Nervii  fought  with  a  courage  which  filled  Caesar  with  admira- 
tion. .  .  .  They  would  not  fly ;  they  dropped  where  they 
stood ;  and  the  battle  ended  only  with  their  extermination. 
Out  of  600  Senators,  there  survived  but  3 ;  out  of  60,000  men 
able  to  bear  arms,  only  500."  It  is  the  prerogative  of  supreme 
genius  thus  to  convert  disaster  into  victory. 

Or  consider  that  momentous  night  in  July  of  1588,  when 
Howard  and  Drake,  hanging  on  the  rear  of  the  Great  Armada, 
had  for  a  week  been  "  plucking  its  feathers  one  by  one."  Now, 
after  midnight,  eight  English  ships  were  fired  and  set  adrift 
among  the  great  Spanish  vessels,  whose  cables  being  at  once 
cut,  crashing  together  in  panic  and  confusion,  they  fled  to 
the  N.N.E.  "  Everything  hung  on  whether  the  attack  could 
be  pushed  home  before  the  enemy  had  re-formed."  It  was 
a  question  almost  of  minutes,  and  in  that  supreme  moment 
the  Lord  Admiral  was  found  wanting.  He  turned  aside  to 
capture  a  galleasse  already  out  of  action.  Then  Drake  in  the 
Revenge  made  straight  for  the  group  in  which  the  San 
Martin  towered,  the  nucleus  of  the  rallying  Armada.  He 
was  followed  by  almost  all  the  other  captains.  A  terrific 
battle  ensued,  in  which  there  was  no  thought  of  prize  or  quarter, 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  295 

and  immense  damage  was  inflicted  on  the  Spanish  vessels. 
At  its  close,  though  to  Drake's  eye  the  enemy's  fleet  still 
seemed  "  wonderful,  great  and  strong,"  the  crowded  galleons  had 
become  mere  charnel-houses,  the  brave  survivors  were  cowed  by 
the  terrible  butchery,  and  Medina  himself  was  in  despair.  "  For 
such  an  hour  Drake's  whole  life  had  been  lived — the  life  he  had 
lived  for  vengeance  on  the  idolaters  and  England's  enemy." 

Neither  was  Richelieu  wanting  to  himself  when,  in  1636, 
having,  rashly  as  it  seemed,  but  with  far-seeing  aim  neverthe- 
less, declared  war  with  Spain,  the  Imperial  troops  entered 
Picardy,  and  advanced,  spreading  ruin  in  their  track,  to  the 
banks  of  the  Oise.  Amid  the  panic  that  everywhere  prevailed, 
he  alone  preserved  his  presence  of  mind.  Deaf  to  entreaties 
and  warnings — for  everybody  was  blaming  him  for  betraying 
his  country  into  war — he  went  almost  unattended  to  the  Hotel 
de  Ville  and  appealed,  not  in  vain,  to  the  patriotism  of  the 
citizens.  Money  was  freely  granted  ;  volunteers  were  enrolled  ; 
his  old  enemies,  the  Huguenots,  mindful  of  his  moderation  in 
the  hour  of  victory,  were  no  less  eager  than  the  Catholics  to 
prove  their  loyalty  to  the  national  cause.  Meanwhile  the 
invaders  had  retreated,  and  the  danger,  thus  boldly  confronted, 
melted  into  thin  air. 

To  Cromwell,  again,  the  furnace-blast  of  danger  was  an 
element  congenial  and  invigorating  as  the  cold  air  of  the 
mountain-top.  At  Edgehill  his  division  stood  firm  when  the 
left  wing  under  Essex  had  been  broken  and  routed  by  Rupert's 
impetuous  charge.  At  Marston  Moor  he  and  the  4000  Iron- 
sides whom  he  had  made  the  embodiment  of  his  will,  not  only 
accomplished  their  own  heroic  task  by  sweeping  Rupert  and 
his  chivalry  from  the  field  like  leaves  before  the  blast,  but, 
returning  to  find  the  right  wing  under  Fairfax  utterly  broken, 
and  the  centre  deserted  by  its  leader  (Leven)  and  almost 
overwhelmed,  swept  round  the  rear  of  the  King's  army,  attacked 
them  in  the  confusion  of  supposed  victory,  and  at  one  stroke 
conquered  the  North  for  his  cause.  The  tale  told  of  Edgehill 
and  Marston  Moor  may  be  retold  of  Naseby,  where,  once  again, 
and  in  much  the  same  fashion,  the  cavalry  arm,  wielded  with 
such  mastery  by  Cromwell,  converted  imminent  defeat  into 


296  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

overwhelming  victory.  Sceptics  with  regard  to  the  force  of 
the  personal  factor  in  war  should  study  the  hard  facts  afforded 
by  the  records  of  these  three  battles.  The  chef  d'ceuvre  of 
Cromwell's  military  genius  was  no  doubt  the  conception  and 
triumphant  organisation  of  the  complex  operations  at  Wor- 
cester which  closed  and  crowned  his  fighting  career.  There 
"  my  Lord  General  did,"  we  know,  "  exceedingly  hazard 
himself,"  as,  on  sufficient  occasion,  every  good  general  must 
and  will.  Yet  more  to  our  present  purpose  are  the  skill  and 
coolness  with  which  in  the  preceding  year  he  had  extricated 
himself  at  Dunbar  from  an  apparently  hopeless  imbroglio. 
Penned  up  in  a  promontory,  with  only  his  ships  as  base,  by 
Lesley's  army  occupying  a  commanding  position  on  the  heights, 
hopelessly  outnumbered,  his  troops  ragged  and  demoralised, 
"  hope  shone  in  him  like  a  pillar  of  fire  when  it  had  gone  out  in 
all  the  others."  On  the  2nd  September  1650,  Lesley,  imagining 
that  Cromwell  was  embarking,  purposing  to  surround  and 
crush  him,  began  to  descend  into  the  plain.  "  The  Lord  hath 
delivered  him  into  our  hands,"  exclaimed  Cromwell.  In  the 
battle  of  3rd  September,  3000  of  the  enemy  were  killed,  10,000 
taken,  with  a  loss  of  only  22  ! 

Frederick  the  Great  was  never  so  dangerous  to  his  enemies 
as  in  the  hour  of  apparent  defeat.  His  reckless  exposure  of 
his  own  person  in  battle  was  often  so  extreme  that  even  the 
common  soldiers  exclaimed  against  it.  At  the  Battle  of  Prague 
in  1757  (Frederick's  Annus  Mirabilis),  his  prompt  occupation 
of  a  gap  left  between  the  wings  of  the  Austrian  army  presum- 
ably gained  him,  the  day.  To  the  relief  of  Prague  Count  Daun 
brought  an  army  nearly  double  the  strength  of  his  own,  which 
Frederick  in  seven  successive  attacks  vainly  attempted  to 
dislodge  from  the  heights  at  Kolin.  Having  lost  nearly  half 
his  men,  Frederick  rode  all  night  with  fourteen  hussars  back  to 
Prague,  dismissed  the  besieging  artillery  and  baggage,  and  was 
in  full  retreat  before  the  news  of  their  relief  by  Count  Daun 
had  reached  the  garrison  of  the  heretofore  beleaguered  city. 
In  October  of  this  same  year  (1757),  Frederick's  position  was  so 
desperate  that  he  is  said  to  have  contemplated  suicide.  His 
capital  had  been  raided  and  pillaged  ;  a  French  army  was 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  297 

plundering  his  people  in  Halbenstadt ;  Daun  and  Charles  of 
Lorraine  were  engaged  in  reconquering  Silesia  ;  French  and 
Imperial  armies  were  overrunning  Saxony.  Domestic  griefs 
and  vexations  were  not  wanting  also  to  his  burdened  spirit. 
Yet  in  the  beginning  of  November,  at  Rossbach,  he  out-man- 
oeuvred and,  in  an  hour  and  a  half,  defeated  an  Austrian 
force  more  than  doubling  his  own.  At  Lissa,  a  month  later, 
when  with  only  36,000  men  he  confronted  60,000  Austrians, 
he  contrived  to  deceive  them  by  a  feigned  attack  upon  their 
right  wing.  Meanwhile,  by  concealed  movements,  he  brought 
practically  his  whole  force  to  bear  upon  their  left,  thus  antici- 
pating Napoleon's  dictum  that  the  secret  of  military  success 
is  always  to  bring  a  superior  force  to  bear  upon  the  point 
attacked.  The  result  of  his  victories  at  Rossbach  and  Lissa 
brought  Frederick  only  a  temporary  relief.  Three  years  later 
Berlin  was  raided  by  40,000  Russian  and  Austrian  troops  ;  and 
at  about  this  time  he  wrote  to  a  friend  :  "  Believe  me,  nothing 
less  than  a  miracle  is  still  necessary  to  extricate  me  from  the 
difficulties  I  foresee.  ...  I  have  the  labours  of  a  Hercules  to 
undergo  at  an  age  when  my  strength  fails  me  and  my  infirmities 
increase  ;  and,  to  speak  the  truth,  when  hope,  the  only  consola- 
tion of  the  unhappy,  begins  to  desert  me."  In  1763  the  miracle 
was  an  accomplished  fact :  the  treaty  of  Hapsburg  restored  to 
Frederick  all  the  territories  possessed  before  the  war. 

With  Nelson  the  craving  for  danger  amounted  to  an  actual 
passion ;  it  was  a  sheer  necessity  of  his  unique  temperament. 
No  one  form  of  danger  could  satisfy  this  imperious  demand  of 
nature  :  he  risked  his  professional  career  by  his  stern  enforce- 
ment of  the  Navigation  Acts  in  the  West  Indies ;  he  was  at 
an  early  age  upon  the  point  of  contracting  an  imprudent  marri- 
age in  Canada  ;  over  and  over  again  he  hazarded  his  reputation, 
far  dearer  than  life  to  such  a  man,  by  his  deliberate  repudiation 
of  orders  which  he  did  not  approve.  In  most  instances  this 
insubordination  was  no  doubt  based  on  worthy  motives,  and 
has  been  abundantly  justified  by  his  biographers.  The  classic 
example  is,  of  course,  his  refusal  to  see  the  signal  for  retreat 
at  Copenhagen.  Even  more  impressive,  however,  as  a  mani- 
festation of  his  genius,  was  the  action  of  Nelson  in  disregarding 


298  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

his  admiral's  signal  off  Cape  St.  Vincent.  Twenty-seven 
Spanish  ships  of  the  line  and  ten  frigates  had  been  sighted, 
and  Sir  J.  Jervis  had  passed  through  their  fleet,  cutting  off 
nine  ships,  of  which  only  one  effected  a  re  junction  with  the 
majority.  He  then  signalled  to  his  other  ships  to  tack  in 
succession,  so  as  to  join  him  in  an  attack  on  the  main  body 
of  the  Spanish  fleet,  whose  numerical  strength  and  fighting 
weight  still  exceeded  his  own.  But  Nelson,  perceiving  that  the 
Spaniards  were  bearing  up  before  the  wind  preparatory  to  going 
off  and  escaping  an  engagement,  instead  of  tacking,  wore  his 
ship,  and  so  brought  her  at  once  into  close  action  with  seven 
of  the  Spanish  vessels.  For  the  victory  which  ensued,  which 
would  have  been  impossible  but  for  Nelson's  bold  initiative, 
Jervis  received  an  earldom,  Nelson  a  rear -admiralty  and  the 
Order  of  the  Bath.  Beresford  and  Wilson's  verdict  upon  the 
latter's  conduct  is  as  follows  :  "  The  moment  was  critical.  .  .  . 
Instant  action  was  demanded.  .  .  .  The  British  rear  must 
act  for  itself.  It  must  disregard  rules  and  precedents  which 
ordained  that  no  captain  should  quit  the  line  of  battle.  The 
man  who  made  the  venture  risked  fame  and  life." 

On  one  occasion,  however,  Nelson  disregarded  orders  for 
motives  which  cannot  for  a  moment  be  defended.  In  July  of 
1799,  when  ordered  by  Lord  Keith  to  proceed  from  Naples  to 
Minorca  with  his  entire  force,  he  took  it  upon  himself  to  decide 
that  Naples  (that  is,  Emma  and  the  "  dear  Queen ")  could 
not  be  deprived  of  his  protection,  and  sent  only  a  small  portion 
of  his  fleet  under  Admiral  Duckworth.  A  peremptory  reitera- 
tion of  Lord  Keith's  order  was  entirely  ignored  ;  Nelson  would 
not  part  with  a  single  ship  more.  For  this  act  of  insubordina- 
tion, rightly  stigmatised  by  Mahan  as  "  flagrant,"  Nelson 
received  the  formal  censure  of  the  Admiralty. 

Of  Nelson's  zest  for  mere  physical  danger  it  can  hardly  be 
necessary  to  give  examples.1  In  his  youth  he  was  always  an 

1  It  appears,  though,  that  even  in  regard  to  courage  there  is  a  possibility 
of  specialism  or  idiosyncrasy.  Once  when  being  driven  through  the  grounds 
at  Fonthill  in  a  carriage  and  four  by  Beckford,  Nelson,  though  the  horses 
were  well  trained  and  perfectly  under  command,  suddenly  exclaimed  :  "  This 
is  too  much  for  me,  you  must  set  me  down,"  and  persisted  in  alighting. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  299 

eager  volunteer  for  any  specially  desperate  enterprise.  His 
exclamation  at  Copenhagen,  "  Warm  work  !  But  mark  you,  I 
would  not  be  elsewhere  for  thousands,"  came  straight  from  his 
heart.  For  a  battle  royal  he  decked  himself  as  a  bridegroom 
for  the  wedding  festival :  his  death  is  in  all  probability  attribut- 
able to  the  fact  that,  despite  the  urgent  remonstrances  of  his 
officers,  he  made  himself,  at  Trafalgar,  a  conspicuous  target  for 
the  sharpshooters  of  the  French  fleet  by  appearing  in  full  rig, 
his  breast  ablaze  with  the  stars  of  his  various  orders.  "  In 
honour  I  gained  them,  and  in  honour  I  will  die  with  them." 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Nelson  had  indeed  a  strong  pre- 
monition of  death  on  the  eve  of  Trafalgar. 

Among  all  the  reproaches,  just  and  unjust,  that  have  been 
heaped  upon  the  head  of  Napoleon,  there  is  one  taunt  that  has 
perforce  been  commonly  spared.  His  personal  valour  was  of 
that  highest  order  which  he  himself  has  defined  as  "  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning  courage."  Even  in  the  days  of  his  Imperial 
magnificence,  he  loved  to  appear  in  his  military  uniform  :  in 
that  he  felt  and  looked  himself,  at  his  best  and  greatest.  On 
the  field  of  battle  his  mind  worked  with  astonishing  rapidity, 
with  complete  detachment  from  all  irrelevant  considerations, 
with  a  fatal  precision  comparable  only  to  the  forces  that  produce 
the  avalanche  or  the  earthquake.  Emerson  quotes  from 
Seruzier  the  account  of  an  episode  which  occurred  soon  after 
the  battle  of  Austerlitz.  The  Kussian  army  was  retreating, 
painfully  but  in  good  order,  upon  the  surface  of  the  frozen  lake. 
The  Emperor  Napoleon  rode  up  at  full  speed  toward  the  artillery. 
"  You  are  losing  time,"  he  cried  ;  "  fire  upon  those  masses  ;  they 
must  be  ingulfed ;  fire  upon  the  ice  !  "  Light  howitzers  were 
trained  so  as  to  fire  into  the  air  ;  the  almost  perpendicular  fall 
of  the  heavy  projectiles  fractured  the  ice,  "  and  in  less  than  no 
time  we  buried  some  thousands  of  Russians  and  Austrians  under 
the  waters  of  the  lake." 

Everybody  knows  the  story  of  what  he  himself  described  as 
"  the  terrible  passage  of  the  bridge  of  Lodi."  Having  driven 
Beaulieu  across  the  River  Adda,  Buonaparte  found  his  own 
passage  obstructed  by  a  battery  of  thirty  cannon  sweeping  the 
bridge  from  side  to  side.  With  his  own  hands  the  young  general, 


300  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

under  the  full  force  of  the  Austrian  fire,  trained  two  guns  on  the 
bridge  so  that  the  enemy  could  not  reach  it.  This  unconven- 
tional act  earned  him  from  the  delighted  soldiers  his  enduring 
soubriquet,  "  le  petit  Caporal."  Meanwhile,  Beaumont  had 
crossed  by  a  distant  ford,  and,  in  the  confusion  effected  by  his 
flank  attack,  Buonaparte  led  the  rush  which  carried  the  bridge. 
But  why  heap  Ossa  upon  Pelion  ?  All  the  world  knows  that, 
to  Napoleon,  human  life,  his  own  and  that  of  his  fellows,  gentle 
and  simple,  friends  and  foes,  was  a  mere  pawn  in  the  dangerous 
game  he  played  for  power  and  glory,  recognising  one  rule,  and  one 
only — the  loser  pays  \ 

Although  the  task  undertaken  by  Abraham  Lincoln  made  his 
life  the  storm-centre  of  a  huge,  passion-distraught  continent, 
and  led  to  his  death  by  the  pistol  of  an  assassin,  he  was  never, 
in  my  opinion,  a  man  who  loved  or  sought  danger  for  its  own 
sake.  He  loved  work,  so  long  as  it  was  of  congenial  kind,  and 
his  aims  were  exalted ;  but  his  method  of  overcoming  the 
obstacles  in  his  path  was  essentially  prudent  and  conciliatory. 
There  was,  in  fact,  a  plebeian  strain  in  his  character,  something 
deferential  if  not  obsequious  ;  he  could  not  dispense  with  popu- 
larity, and  took  infinite  pains  to  accommodate  his  personal 
principles  to  the  expectations  of  his  party.  Personally,  he  no 
doubt  loathed  slavery,  considering  that  if  that  was  not  wrong 
nothing  could  be  wrong  ;  but  he  long  postponed  any  outspoken 
denunciation  of  the  system,  and  was  never  an  Abolitionist  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word.  In  1862,  about  two  years  after  his  first 
election  to  the  Presidency,  when  the  Civil  War  had  fairly  begun, 
Lincoln  thus  defined  his  policy  :  "  My  paramount  object  is  to 
save  the  Union,  and  not  either  to  save  or  destroy  slavery.  If 
I  could  save  the  Union  without  freeing  any  slave,  I  would  do  it ; 
if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing  all  the  slaves,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I 
could  save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I  would 
also  do  that.  ...  I  have  here  stated  my  purpose  according  to  my 
views  of  official  duty,  and  I  intend  no  modification  of  my  oft- 
expressed  personal  wish  that  all  men  everywhere  could  be  free." 
Still  it  is  by  no  mere  accident  that  a  man  comes  to  the  front  in 
such  a  time  and  place  as  that  of  the  American  Civil  War.  The 
adventurous  instinct  cannot  be  wanting  in  one  who  achieves  a 


NAPOLEON. 
Engraved  by  Bosquet  from  the  painting  by  David. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  301 

destiny  so  arduous,  and  holds  power  on  a  tenure  so  precarious, 
— one,  moreover,  who  conducts  to  a  triumphant  issue  the  gigantic 
human  interest  entrusted  to  his  care. 

The  adventurous  instinct  in  men  of  the  aesthetic  type,  though 
by  no  means  always  lacking,  takes,  as  a  rule,  the  less  sensational 
form  of  an  unworldly  contempt  for  material  standards  of  success 
and  security,  rather  than  that  of  a  deliberate  quest  of  perilous 
emprise.  Of  this  unworldliness  Mozart  is  a  typical  example ; 
he  never  learned  to  drive  a  bargain,  and  was  not  by  any  means 
punctilious  in  discharging  such  obligations  as  he  might  have 
incurred.  Thus,  when  in  1777  (aet.  20)  he  was  in  the  throes  of  his 
infatuation  for  Aloysia  Weber,  he  caused  his  father  serious 
inconvenience  by  his  neglect  of  a  commission  to  supply  certain 
compositions  to  a  Hollander  at  the  price  of  200  gulden.  The 
penury  of  his  last  years  was  the  direct  consequence  of  his  too 
chivalrous  refusal  of  the  King  of  Prussia's  offer  of  the  post  of 
Kapellmeister  at  Berlin  at  a  salary  equivalent  to  £450  per 
annum.  This  when  he  was  in  dire  straits  for  money,  when 
the  "  good  Kaiser,"  whom  he  refused  to  "  forsake,"  was,  for  a 
similar  post,  paying  him  the  starvation  wage  of  about  £52  per 
annum.  Analogous  traits  of  imprudence — rather,  shall  we  say, 
of  unbending  fidelity  to  a  certain  Quixotic  standard  of  personal 
dignity  and  independence — could  easily  be  shown  in  the  lives  of 
Dante,  Leonardo,  Beethoven,  and  Flaubert.  Titian,  Goethe, 
Scott,  and  Turner  were,  on  the  other  hand,  all  keenly  alive  to 
the  main  chance.  Of  spiritual  audacity,  Goethe,  at  least,  had  an 
immense  fund,  but  in  social  and  financial  matters  he  was,  upon 
the  whole,  true  to  his  bourgeois  origin  and  upbringing. 

The  case  of  Cervantes  deserves  especial  mention ;  in  him 
the  chivalrous  instinct  of  the  warrior  and  the  unworldliness  of 
the  born  artist  were  as  one.  During  his  five  years  of  Algerian 
slavery  he  established  a  unique  reputation  for  absolute  con- 
tempt of  such  dangers  as  might  well  have  appalled  a  hero.  And 
the  unfailing  cheerfulness  and  even  joviality  with  which  he  sus- 
tained the  endless  privations,  disappointments,  persecutions, 
and  contumelies  of  his  ensuing  long  life  of  ill-recompensed 
drudgery,  prove  that  the  grand  hidalgo  spirit  which  enabled 
him  in  his  youth  to  confront  Hassan's  threats  of  torture  or  death 


302  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

without  flinching,  remained   steadfast   and   unbroken   to   the 
end. 

In  the  nature  of  things  it  is  obviously  not  among  men  who 
devote  themselves  to  intellectual  interests  that  one  would  look 
for  exemplars  of  that  dare-devil  spirit  which  loves  and  courts 
physical  danger.  Still  they,  too,  as  pioneers  of  the  Reason 
World,  have  their  perils  to  face,  of  which  more  may  be  said  in 
another  section.  One  has  here  only  to  recall  how  Galileo,  by 
his  native  impetuosity,  incurred  and  suffered  from  that  odium 
theologicum  which  his  more  politic  predecessor,  Copernicus,  had 
so  deftly  conciliated.  How  Harvey,  travelling  in  the  train  of 
Lord  Arundel  to  Vienna,  through  a  country  rendered  lawless 
and  turbulent  by  the  devastation  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War, 
"  would  still  be  making  observations  of  strange  trees  and  plants, 
earths,  etc.,  and  sometimes  he  was  like  to  be  lost.  So  that  my 
Lord  Ambassador  would  be  really  angry  with  him,  for  there 
was  not  only  a  danger  of  thieves,  but  also  of  wild  beasts." 
Darwin,  too,  during  his  remarkable  voyage,  sometimes  took 
part  in  expeditions  on  horseback  into  the  wilds,  or  in  the  explora- 
tion of  rivers,  for  weeks  at  a  time  ;  and  we  have  his  own  word 
for  the  fact  that  these  were  not  unattended  with  danger.  Spinoza 
not  merely  braved  but  almost  courted  excommunication,  and 
the  social  and  religious  ostracism  it  involved.  He,  like  Leibnitz, 
refused  the  offer  of  an  official  position  which  threatened  his 
intellectual  autonomy,  and,  like  Kant,  endured  the  rigours  of 
extreme  poverty  with  a  stoical  indifference.  Kant's  courage, 
however,  in  the  days  of  his  comparative  prosperity  and  prestige, 
once  failed  him  in  a  matter  of  another  and  more  crucial  signifi- 
cance. Censured  by  the  reactionary  Court  of  Berlin  for  the 
heterodox  tendencies  of  his  Religion  within  the  Bounds  of  Mere 
Reason,  and  sharply  warned  for  the  future  to  "be  guilty  of  no 
such  acts,"  the  old  philosopher  promptly  ate  humble-pie, 
craftily  wording  his  pledge  of  compliance  in  such  a  way  that  he 
might  consider  himself  bound  by  it  only  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  King.  Of  Descartes'  moral  cowardice  we  have  already 
said  enough  ;  Newton,  too,  was  a  timid  soul,  who  so  hated 
controversy  that  he  thought  seriously  at  one  time  of  discon- 
tinuing the  publication  of  his  researches. 


MOZART. 
From  a  /minting  by  Tischbein. 


To  face  /.  302. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  303 

I  have  more  than  once  pointed  out  the  analogy  existing 
between  the  lives  of  men  of  action  and  those  of  ethico-religious 
pioneers.    This  is  borne  out  by  consideration  of  the  demand 
made  in  both  on  the  virtue  of  fortitude,  but  the  fortitude  of 
the   ethico-religious   pioneer  is   obviously   of  a   different   and 
higher  kind  than  that  of  the  mere  soldier  or  statesman.     The 
latter  suns  himself  in  the  light  and  heat  of  popularity,  without 
which  he  can  achieve   nothing.     The  former  braves  popular 
opinion  from  the  very  outset  of  his  career  ;  deliberately  chooses 
a  way  of  life  which  must  bring  him  into  an  atmosphere  of  con- 
tempt and  hatred ;    stakes  his  all  on  the  truth  of  his  moral  or 
spiritual  insight  into  the  unrecognised  need  of  his  age.     There 
has  recently  been  published  the  account  of  an  interview  with 
that  enlightened  Chinese  reformer,  Kang  Yu  Wei,  which  is 
at  once  a  striking  confirmation  of  the  above  generalisation  and 
a  perfect  expression  of  my  own  view  of  the  character  of  Christ, 
as  revealed  in  the  Gospels.     Kang  Yu  Wei  said  that  "  what 
appealed  to  him  most  in  the  personality  of  Jesus  was  his  courage 
— the  manliness  which  could  so  quietly  and  dauntlessly  face  the 
hatred  of  so  many  of  his  countrymen,  the  fierce  enmity  of  the 
powerful  Pharisees,  and,  above  all,  the  certainty  of  death  and 
of  the  outward  failure  of  his  mission  ;  the  courage  which  under- 
took a  work  so  constructive,  the  valour  which  could  make,  and 
could  ask  from  others,  such  large  sacrifices."  l    On  the  adventur- 
ous career  of  St.  Paul  it  cannot  be  necessary  to  dwell :    the 
vicissitudes  endured  by  that  indefatigable  standard-bearer  of 
Christendom  are  familiar  to  us  all.    We  know  how  he  was 
lowered  by  night  in  a  basket  from  the  walls  of  Damascus  when 
the  angry  Jews  had  obtained  a  warrant  for  his  arrest ;    how, 
at  Lystra,  after  being  stoned  he  was  left  for  dead  ;  how  he  was 
publicly  flogged,  imprisoned,  and  exposed  in  the  stocks  to  the 
insults  of  the  mob  at  Philippi ;    how  he  was  tortured  by  the 
malevolent  misrepresentation  of  those  whom  he  had  benefited, 
from  whom  he  had  every  right  to  expect  encouragement  and  aid  ; 
how,  on  the  eve  of  his  departure  from  Corinth,  a  conspiracy  to 
seize  and  kill  him  necessitated  the  change  of  his  route  to  Jeru- 

1  "  A  Chinese  Statesman's  View  of  Religion,"  by  Charles  Johnston,  Hibbert 
Journal,  vol.  vii.  No.  1. 


304  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

salem  ;  how,  despite  of  presentiments  and  warnings,  he  persisted 
in  returning  to  the  Holy  City  ;  how,  there  again,  he  was  rescued 
from  an  infuriate  mob  by  the  intervention  of  the  Tribune  ;  how 
he  was  shipwrecked  at  Malta ;  and,  if  tradition  may  be  trusted, 
martyred  under  Nero  at  Rome. 

The  life  of  Mahomet,  from  the  time  of  his  conversion  (set. 
40),  was  for  more  than  ten  years  one  of  almost  perpetual  danger 
and  ignominy.  Thirteen  years'  work  had  produced  little  ap- 
parent effect,  when,  on  the  invitation  of  some  of  his  converts, 
he  retired  from  Mecca  to  Medina.  At  the  mature  age  of  fifty- 
three  he  took  the  sword  in  hand,  which  was  but  seldom  sheathed 
until  the  time  of  his  death  ten  years  later  (A.D.  632).  Although 
in  the  long  series  of  conflicts  which  began  with  the  battle  of 
Beder  (623),  Mahomet's  own  part  was  rather  that  of  an  inspirer 
and  organiser  than  of  an  active  combatant,  he  nevertheless  did 
not  shirk  the  dangers  peculiar  to  his  position.  At  the  battle 
of  Ohod,  when  the  Koreishites  outnumbered  his  followers  in 
the  proportion  of  three  to  one,  he  refused  to  countenance  re- 
treat, was  twice  wounded,  and  his  force  was  completely  routed. 

As  to  St.  Francis  d'Assisi,  perhaps  no  one  will  venture  to 
question  the  fundamental  nature  of  his  craving  to  subject 
himself  to  the  most  stringent  and  painful  tests,  that  he  might 
convince  himself  and  others  of  the  superiority  of  the  spirit 
and  its  needs  to  those  of  the  flesh,  the  complete  independence 
of  spiritual  serenity  of  all  material  boons  or  enhancements. 
If  anybody  has  any  doubt  on  the  matter,  let  him  consider  the 
Saint's  definition  of  "Perfect  Joy"  as  expounded  to  Brother  Leo, 
and — compare  it  with  his  own.  "When  we  shall  be  at  Santa 
Maria  Degli  Angeli,  thus  soaked  by  the  rain,  and  frozen  by 
the  cold,  and  befouled  with  mud,  and  afflicted  with  hunger, 
and  shall  knock  at  the  door,  and  the  doorkeeper  shall  come  in 
anger  and  shall  say,  '  Who  are  ye  ? '  and  we  shall  say,  '  We  are 
two  of  your  friars ' ;  and  he  shall  say,  '  Ye  speak  not  truth ; 
rather  are  ye  two  lewd  fellows ;  .  .  .  get  you  hence  ! '  and  shall 
not  open  to  us,  but  shall  make  us  stay  outside  in  the  rain  and 
snow,  cold  and  hungry,  even  unto  night ;  then  if  ^'we  shall 
bear  such  great  wrongs  and  such  cruelty  andj  such  rebuffs 
patiently,  without  disquieting  ourselves  and  without  murmuring 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  305 

against  him  .  .  .  Oh,  Friar  Leo,  write  that  here  is  perfect  joy. 
.  .  .  And  if  we  shall  continue  to  knock,  and  he,  greatly  offended 
thereat,  .  .  .  shall  come  forth  with  a  knotty  club,  and  shall 
throw  us  on  the  ground  and  roll  us  in  the  snow,  and  shall  cudgel 
us  pitilessly  with  that  club  ;  if  we  shall  bear  all  these  things 
patiently  and  with  cheerfulness,  thinking  on  the  sufferings  of 
Christ,  ...  Oh,  Friar  Leo,  write  that  here  and  in  this  is  perfect 
joy." 

Luther  was  near  the  close  of  his  thirty-third  year  when  by 
the  posting  up  of  his  ninty-five  Theses  he  made  himself  the 
champion  of  ecclesiastical  decentralisation  and  theological 
reform.  Henceforward  his  life  became  the  storm-centre  of  a 
raging  controversy,  which  for  centuries  after  his  death  still 
distracted  Christendom  with  ever-increasing  virulence.  When, 
in  the  following  year,  under  pledge  of  immunity  from  the 
Pope's  legate,  Luther  set  out  for  the  Diet  of  Augsburg,  his  bold 
spirit  was  not  free  from  misgivings.  "  My  thoughts  on  the 
way  were,  now  I  must  die."  Arrived,  he  writes  to  Melanchthon  : 
"  The  town  is  full  of  talk  of  me,  and  everybody  wants  to  see  the 
man  who  has  kindled  such  a  flame.  ...  I  will  rather  die  than 
revoke  anything  that  it  was  right  for  me  to  say."  Two  years 
later,  when  cited  by  the  Emperor  to  the  Diet  of  Worms,  there  to 
answer  for  his  doctrines  and  to  retract  his  errors,  or  be  treated  as 
a  heretic,  Luther  said  that  he  would  go  to  Worms  though  there 
were  as  many  devils  there  as  there  were  tiles  on  the  house-tops. 
But  he  would  not  recant.  "  I  will  not  fear  ten  thousand  Popes, 
for  He  who  is  with  me  is  greater  than  he  who  is  in  the  world." 
On  his  first  appearance  before  the  Diet,  Luther  seems  to  have 
been  a  trifle  cowed  by  the  solemnity  of  the  occasion,  and  when 
shown  his  books  and  asked  to  recant,  answered  in  a  low  voice 
and  as  if  frightened,  that  since  their  contents  concerned  the 
highest  of  all  things,  he  must  humbly  entreat  further  time 
for  consideration.  On  the  next  day  he  showed  a  bolder  front, 
and,  in  the  upshot,  the  utmost  concession  that  could  be  wrung 
from  him  was  that  in  his  polemic  against  individuals  he  had 
shown  undue  violence.  To  his  friends  he  confided  that  if  he 
had  a  thousand  heads  he  would  have  them  all  cut  off  rather  than 
make  one  recantation.  What  can  be  done  with  such  recal- 
20 


306  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

citrant  stalwarts  by  the  "  good  and  just "  representatives  of 
"  Law  and  Order  "  ?  This  was  the  supreme  crisis  of  Luther's 
personal  drama  :  no  doubt  he  was  saved  from  a  heretic's  death 
by  the  secret  removal  to  the  Wartburg,  arranged  on  his  behalf 
by  Frederick  the  Wise.  Up  to  and  beyond  the  date  of  the  Diet 
of  Augsburg,  Luther  is  described  as  being  "  so  wasted  by  care 
that  all  his  bones  may  be  counted."  In  his  later  and  more 
prosperous  years  at  Wittenberg,  he  became  corpulent  and 
jocose.  But  the  divine  fire  never  again  burned  so  brightly  as 
in  those  first  years  of  danger  and  stress.  The  plebeian  strain 
in  the  man  showed  itself  in  a  certain  arrogance  and  impatience 
of  controversy,  a  tendency  to  ruthless  invective,  even  brutal 
exaggeration  of  the  faults  and  personal  failings  of  his  adversaries. 
Nor  can  it  be  forgotten  that  Luther  advised  the  Elector  to 
accept  the  Decree  of  the  Diet  of  Speier  (1529),  whereby  all 
rebaptized  persons  were  to  be  executed  without  trial ;  and 
urged  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse  to  execute  the  anabaptist 
Frederick  Erbe.  His  weakness  in  sanctioning  Philip's  bigamous 
marriage  with  Margaret  von  der  Saal  was  a  further  proof  of 
deterioration,  the  more  so  in  that  the  dispensation  was  made 
conditional  upon  a  pledge  of  secrecy  from  the  interested  parties. 
The  debacle  of  medieval  discipline  represented  by  Luther 
was  by  no  means  an  unmixed  good. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  recluse  habits  of  those  great  men, 
whose  water  of  life  is  drawn,  not  from  the  village-pump  of 
public  opinion,  but  from  the  deep  well  of  solitude,  that  well 
which,  Science  warns  us,  is  guarded  by  the  hags  Misanthropy 
and  Melancholia.  Among  these  adventurers  our  men  of  action 
are  for  the  most  part  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  Charle- 
magne, we  are  told,  kept  writing-tablets  under  his  pillow, 
wherein  were  duly  noted  happy  thoughts,  in  the  shape  of 
subjects  for  discussion  at  the  feasts  of  reason  in  which  he 
delighted,  or  casuistical  posers  for  his  favourite  butts,  the 
bishops.  Napoleon  was,  in  his  boyhood,  moody  and  taciturn  ;  it 
was  then,  surely,  that  he  was  hoardingthe  immense  fund  of  spiritual 
energy  which  in  due  time  burst  like  a  fiery  levin  on  the  aston- 
ished world.  The  influence  of  those  recluse  years  could  in  after 
times  always  be  re-awakened  by  the  sound  of  bells,  which  had 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  307 

for  his  dark  soul  a  strange,  compelling  charm.  At  the  sound 
of  church  bells  his  voice  would  falter  as  he  said,  "Ah,  this 
recalls  to  my  mind  the  first  years  I  passed  at  Brienne.  ...  I 
was  happy  then  !  "  Lincoln,  in  the  days  of  his  studious  youth, 
frequented  the  dangerous  well ;  and,  as  we  know,  escaped 
not  the  blighting  touch  of  one  at  least  of  its  fearful  guardians. 
At  twenty-six  he  became  insane,  or  nearly  so,  and  again,  for 
nearly  a  year,  at  thirty-one.  All  his  life  he  remained  prone  to 
attacks  of  intense  depression ;  against  the  assaults  of  this 
haunting  terror  his  wonderful  gift  of  humour  provided  a  weapon 
sorely  needed  and  bravely  plied. 

Poets,  artists,  and  musicians  are,  if  our  examples  may  be 
accounted  typical, — and  I  think  no  one  will  deny  this, — ad- 
dicted to  solitude  only  in  so  far  as  their  aesthetic  bias  is  qualified 
by  an  intellectual  factor.  Such  men  as  Titian,  Cervantes, 
Mozart,  Scott,  and  Turner,  although,  no  doubt,  in  the  actual 
production  of  their  work  they  perforce  dwell  apart  from  society, 
do  not  seem  to  have  loved  or  needed  solitude  as  a  spiritual 
sanctuary,  a  source  of  inspiration  and  power.  Cervantes 
would  seem  indeed  to  have  owed  some  germinal  conception 
of  his  Don  Quixote  to  the  enforced  seclusion  of  his  immola- 
tion in  the  house  of  Medrano,  but  one  cannot  think  of  him  as 
otherwise  than  a  genial  and  sociable  spirit.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  was  not  strictly  intellectual,  not  a  thinker,  but  an 
artist,  almost  a  man  of  affairs.  Mozart  could,  on  emergency, 
abstract  himself  completely  from  the  most  perturbing  and 
harassing  surroundings — in  his  last  phase  the  very  hopelessness 
of  his  position  would  seem  to  have  induced  a  sort  of  desperate 
concentration  of  his  powers  upon  the  work  that  yet  remained 
to  be  done.  But  in  happier  times  he  could  work  all  day  and 
night,  sipping  punch,  and  listening,  between  whiles,  to  the 
storiettes  extemporised  by  his  voluble  Constance. 

Scott  wooed  his  Muse  on  horseback  :  "I  had  many  a  wild 
gallop  among  these  braes,"  he  exclaimed,  "  when  I  was  think- 
ing of  Marmion"  Solitude  of  a  kind,  yes — but  not  the  real 
thing ;  that  cannot  be  taken  at  a  gallop  !  Scott  loved  youth 
and  sunlight ;  enough  for  him  to  "lie  simmering  over  things 
for  an  hour  or  so  "  before  he  got  up.  He  said  himself  that 


308  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

there  was  a  demon  who  seated  himself  "  in  the  feather  of  his 
pen "  when  he  began  to  write.  Inevitably,  therefore,  he 
abhorred  writing  to  a  prearranged  plan,  and  could  seldom 
adhere  to  one  which  he  might  have  laid  down  for  himself.  The 
frequent  irruption  of  his  children  was  no  serious  distraction 
to  the  flow  of  his  ready  invention.  No  recluse  habit,  this,  of 
a  verity  ;  consequently,  no  profundity,  no  passionate  con- 
viction, no  defiance  of  destiny,  no  gauntlet  hurled  in  the  face 
of  the  gods  ! 

Turner,  again,  that  strange  mixture  of  stubborn  reticence 
and  incoherent  garrulity,  was  in  the  main  of  a  sociable  tem- 
perament. He  loved  to  attend  the  official  functions  of  the 
Royal  Academy,  where  he  made  speeches  which  "  no  fellow 
could  understand,"  loved  to  welcome  his  old  friends  and  to 
hobnob  with  casual  acquaintances.  It  is  one  of  the  mysteries 
of  the  paradoxical  aesthetic  temperament,  that,  as  Shakespeare 
was  a  loose  liver,  a  litigious  neighbour,  and  one  who  deigned 
to  connive  at  the  schemes  of  unprincipled  land-grabbers,  the 
refined  genius  of  Turner  sought  inspiration,  not  in  solitary 
thought,  but  in  wine-bibbing  and  in  participation  in  the  sensual 
orgies  of  low  night-birds  in  the  taverns  of  Wapping  and 
Rotherhithe. 

Dante,  on  the  other  hand,  the  philosophic  poet  and  pre- 
cursor of  the  Reformation,  was,  above  all  things,  and  from 
first  to  last,  a  solitary  soul.  We  know  how,  in  his  early  man- 
hood, absorbed  in  the  delineation  of  certain  angelic  features, 
he  noted  not  that  several  friends  had  entered  and  stood  beside 
him  overlooking  his  work.  "  Another  was  with  me,"  he  said, 
when  at  last  he  preceived  their  presence.  Once,  years  later, 
in  Siena,  he  remained  standing  from  noon  till  past  vespers  in 
an  apothecary's  shop,  reading  a  certain  book,  unaware  of  the 
bustle  and  excitement  of  a  great  tournament  which  was  pro- 
ceeding close  at  hand.  Leonardo,  Goethe,  Beethoven,  and 
Flaubert  were  all,  in  their  several  degrees,  more  or  less  addicted 
to  solitude  or  abstraction,  all  being,  to  some  extent,  men  of 
thought,  not  mere  artists. 

But  upon  the  whole,  whereas,  to  the  artist,  solitude  is  at 
most  a  refreshment  and  solace,  to  the  revolutionary  thinker, 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  309 

or  to  the  ethico-religious  innovator,  it  is  a  sine  qua  non.  Ideas 
destined  to  evoke  fierce  controversy,  to  set  the  world  by  the 
ears,  to  upset  comfortable  traditions,  and  consume  cherished 
illusions, — ideas  that  bring  "  not  peace  but  a  sword,"  are,  in 
the  days  of  their  inception  and  germination,  too  fragile  to 
survive  the  chill  breath  of  indiscriminate  association.  From 
commonplace  and  sordid  minds  there  emanates  a  subtle  en- 
slaving and  terrorising  aura,  provocative  of  self-mistrust  in 
the  guilty  conscience  of  the  would-be  reformer.  Guilty  the 
unconventional  thinker  feels  himself  to  be  in  the  society  of 
the  conventional  conforming  majority  ;  hence,  perforce,  during 
his  periods  of  mental  gestation,  like  a  woman  concealing  her 
shame,  he  dwells  apart,  until  the  burden  of  his  mind  shall 
have  acquired  substance  and  form,  and  is  ready  for  its  birth 
into  a  hostile  and  envious  world.  This  is  a  law  from  which 
there  is  no  escape,  except  perhaps  for  the  revolutionist  whose 
dangerous  purpose  masks  itself  under  the  guise  of  an  ironic 
loyalty  to  the  conventions  which  it  is  self-pledged  to  destroy. 

Evidence  of  this  primary  need  abounds  in  the  biographies 
of  the  majority  of  our  examples  of  the  intellectual  and  othico- 
religious  types.  Of  Bacon,  Macaulay  records  how  "  in  his 
magnificent  grounds "  (at  Gorhambury,  I  presume)  "  he 
erected,  at  a  cost  of  £10,000,  a  retreat  to  which  he  repaired 
when  he  wished  to  avoid  all  visitors  and  to  devote  himself 
wholly  to  study.  On  such  occasions  a  few  young  men  of 
distinguished  talents  were  sometimes  the  companions  of  his 
retirement."  The  love  of  solitude  is  by  no  means  incompatible 
with  an  appreciation  of  congenial  society.  At  York  House 
and  Gorhambury,  Bacon  gathered  round  him  the  choicest 
spirits  of  his  time — Ben  Jonson,  Fulke  Greville,  Sir  H.  Wotton, 
Sir  T.  Bodley,  Launcelot  Andrews,  Toby  Matthews,  among 
others.  For  his  chosen  band  of  young  enthusiasts  he  no 
doubt  provided  experimental  work  bearing  on  the  subjects 
of  his  various  inquiries. 

William  Harvey  carried  his  love  of  solitude  to  the  whimsical 
extreme  of  having  caves  excavated  in  his  grounds  at  Combe 
for  summer  meditation.  To  obviate  the  distracting  effects  of 
the  perception  of  surrounding  objects,  he  loved  to  sit  in  com- 


310  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

plete  darkness.  In  his  latter  years  he  lived  a  recluse  life, 
devoting  himself  to  the  completion  of  his  Treatise  on  Develop- 
ment, and  finding  much  joy  in  the  absence  of  external  cares  and 
responsibilities.  "  This  life  of  obscurity,  this  vacation  from 
public  business,  has  proved  a  sovereign  remedy  for  me." 

Of  the  strange  personality  of  Descartes,  one  of  the  out- 
standing traits  is  his  deliberate  advocacy  and  practice  of  sheer 
physical  indolence  as  a  favouring  condition  of  intellectual 
production.  He  slept  much,  and  habitually  spent  the  forenoon 
in  bed.  How,  at  a  critical  moment  in  his  mental  development, 
he  shut  himself  up  all  day  in  a  warm  room,  and  remained  there 
alone  until  he  had  mapped  out  the  scheme  of  his  Rfework,  has 
already  been  related. 

Of  Spinoza,  it  is  on  record  that  he  once  kept  the  house  for 
a  continuous  period  of  three  months.  Time  was  nothing  to 
him,  who  lived  in  and  for  eternity. 

The  intense  inner  life  of  Newton  often  rendered  him  oblivious 
of  his  surroundings.  He  often  forgot  his  meals,  would  be  quite 
unable  to  say  whether  he  had  dined  or  not,  and  quite  indifferent 
He  would  sit  for  hours  on  his  bed,  forgetting  to  dress,  plunged 
in  some  abstruse  mathematical  problem. 

Kant,  methodical  in  all  things,  did  not  forget  to  provide 
for  the  need  of  solitary  meditation.  "  Rising,  coffee -drinking, 
writing,  collegiate  lectures,  dining,  walking — each  "  as  Heine 
observes,  "  had  its  set  time.  And  when  Immanuel  Kant,  in  his 
grey  coat,  cane  in  hand,  appeared  at  the  door  of  his  house,  and 
strolled  towards  the  small  linden  avenue,  which  is  still  called 
'  the  Philosopher's  Walk,'  the  neighbours  knew  it  was  exactly 
half -past  four."  On  his  return,  Kant  would  sit  by  the  stove  in 
his  room,  gazing  through  the  window  towards  Lobenicht  church 
tower.  This  was  his  time  for  meditation  ;  and  it  is  told  of  him, 
that  when  some  poplars,  growing  in  a  neighbour's  garden, 
grew  so  tall  as  to  obstruct  his  view  of  the  church  tower,  Kant 
found  his  train  of  thought  so  deranged  by  the  new  conditions 
that  he  knew  no  peace  until  he  had  persuaded  the  owner  to  cut 
away  the  offending  summits. 

When  I  speak  of  solitude,  I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood 
in  a  formal  sense — as  if  one  could  not  be  alone  in  the  midst 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  311 

of  a  crowd.  Hegel,  during  the  two  years  (an.  aet.  46-48)  when 
he  was  engaged  on  that  general  outline  of  his  philosophy  known 
as  the  Encyclopedia,  became  "  so  intensely  concentrated  on  the 
effort  of  applying  his  principles  to  nature  and  history  as  some- 
times to  lose  all  sense  of  external  things.  His  students  thought 
him  idle,  because  they  used  to  see  him  standing  for  hours  at 
his  window,  looking  out  on  the  misty  hills  and  woods  of  Heidel- 
berg ;  and  it  is  related  that  on  one  occasion,  as  he  was  walking 
to  the  university,  after  a  heavy  rain,  he  left  a  shoe  in  the  mud 
without  being  conscious  of  the  loss." 

Bacon  in  his  pavilion,  Harvey  in  his  cave,  Descartes  in 
bed,  Spinoza  in  his  humble  apartment,  Newton  oblivious  of  the 
dinner  bell,  Kant  sitting  pensive  by  the  stove,  Hegel  in  the 
mud — a  quaint  company,  truly  !  So  the  great  game  is  played, 
whose  issue  is  the  future  of  Humanity  ;  so  the  immortal  thought 
struggles  painfully  to  the  birth,  and  Wisdom  is  justified  of 
her  children.  The  artist,  when  he  betakes  himself  to  solitude, 
becomes  a  dreamer,  passively  awaiting  inspiration,  as  Danae 
awaited  the  golden  shower  which  made  her  the  mother  of 
Perseus.  The  more  virile  genius  of  the  philosopher  manifests 
itself  in  voluntary  co-operation  with  spontaneous  formative 
impulse.  He  does  not  passively  await  the  advent  of  the  god — 
but  goes  forth  to  meet,  and,  if  need  be,  to  compel  him.  And, 
lastly,  to  the  religious  founder,  to  him  whose  province  is  the 
will — first  his  own  will,  then  that  of  his  fellows — the  withdrawal 
into  the  desert  is  the  preliminary  to  his  hardest  and  most 
portentous  conflict — the  conflict  with  his  own  perverse  instincts 
and  his  own  ambition.  "  Other  men  of  genius  are  born  good, 
the  religious  founder  acquires  goodness  " — conquers  it,  rather, 
by  deliberate,  self-conscious,  above  all  solitary,  effort.  The 
idea  of  his  vocation,  in  the  hour  of  its  inception,  is  too  over- 
whelming to  be  shared  even  with  his  best-beloved  and  most 
trustworthy  confidant.  He,  himself,  cannot  at  first  fully  grasp 
or  even  confidently  entertain  its  fatal  significance.  It  upsets 
all  his  own  cherished  standards,  flouts  all  his  dearest  hopes, 
mocks  all  his  most  sacred  ideals.  In  the  desert  Jesus  dies, 
self-slain,  and  the  Christ,  self-wrought,  rises,  or  will  arise  ere 
long,  phoenix -like,  from  his  ashes.  Nor  are  such  victories,  once 


312  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

won,  secure  and  inviolate  possessions  of  the  spirit.  Ever  and 
anon  the  old  Adam  stirs  in  his  grave  :  life  was  not  extinct, 
after  all — it  has  been  a  case  of  premature  burial.  Long  nights 
must  be  spent  alone  on  the  mountains,  wrestling  with  the 
adversary,  compelling  the  weary  spirit  to  persevere  in  its 
thankless  task,  inciting  its  rebellious  eyes  to  the  tragic  forecast 
of  inevitable  doom.  Alone  at  the  last  in  Gethsemane,  while 
fair-weather  friends  are  sleeping  unconcerned,  the  last  battle 
is  fought  and  won,  the  loathing  of  instinct  repressed,  the  bitter 
cup,  so  often  drained  in  imagination,  if  not  accepted,  at  least 
not  put  aside.  These  things,  if  not  true  as  to  the  letter — for 
who  can  have  overheard  that  poignant  soliloquy  in  the  garden  ? 
— are  psychologically  consistent,  even  typical  imaginations, 
confirmed  therefore  by  what  we  know  of  analogous  crises  in  the 
lives  of  other  ethico -religious  pioneers. 

St.  Augustine,  before  he  took  up  the  active  duties  of  the 
priesthood,  spent  three  years  in  study  and  prayer  at  Thagaste, 
living  there  on  the  modest  patrimony  which  he  had  inherited, 
and  freely  sharing  its  produce  with  a  few  brethren  as  devout 
as  himself.  Of  Gregory  the  Great  it  is  recorded  that  "  his  one 
consolation  was  the  society  of  the  monks,"  with  whom,  on  his 
election  to  the  papacy,  it  had  been  his  first  care  to  replace 
the  lay  attendants  of  the  Lateran  ;  "his  one  pleasure  was  to 
escape  to  a  little  oratory  in  the  church  of  his  own  monastery 
in  the  Coelian,  and  to  spend  a  few  days  unknown  and  unnoticed 
in  reading  and  meditation."  It  was  perhaps  because  Gregory 
suffered  so  keenly  from  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  vocation  for  a 
recluse  life,  that  he  became  the  special  champion  of  the  monks 
as  a  body,  whose  worth  to  the  Church  he  foresaw,  whose  exemp- 
tion from  external  annoyance  he  secured,  and  whose  definite 
status  he  provided  for  by  a  document  issued  in  601,  which 
might  be  called  the  Magna  Charta  of  Monasticism.  "  This," 
he  pathetically  remarks,  "  is  to  be  mainly  considered,  that  the 
constitution  of  minds  is  very  different.  .  .  .  Hence  it  is  neces- 
sary that  the  quiet  mind  should  not  expend  itself  over  the 
exercise  of  immoderate  labour,  nor  the  restless  worry  itself 
over  the  practice  of  contemplation." 

But  Gregory  was,  after  all,  but  little  the  worse  for  the 


ST.    GRKGORY    THK    GRKAT. 


To  face  /.  312. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  313 

denial  by  destiny  of  his  desire  to  devote  himself  to  a  life  of 
pure  contemplation.  He  was  not  a  great  thinker,  or  a  strikingly 
original  force  in  the  sphere  of  abstract  religion.  He  was  a 
great  ecclesiastical  statesman,  constructive  rather  than  creative. 
His  work  was  invaluable  to  the  Church  in  her  medieval  capacity 
of  cosmopolitan  humanising  and  regulative  organisation. 
He  strengthened  her,  broadened  her,  recalled  her  to  forgotten 
ideals,  but  he  added  nothing  new  to  her  doctrinal  or  social 
aims. 

For  an  adequate  conception  of  solitude  as  a  source  of  power, 
we  must  turn  to  the  lives  of  such  origitiators  as  Mahomet  and 
St.  Francis  d'Assisi.  Of  the  former  I  have  already  related 
how,  at  the  age  of  forty,  on  the  eve  of  the  great  undertaking 
to  which  he  felt  himself  urged  by  his  detestation  of  idolatry, 
he  gradually  withdrew  himself  from  society,  spending  days 
and  nights  in  uninterrupted  prayer  and  meditation  in  a  cavern 
on  Mount  Kara.  The  analogy  with  the  Gospel  narrative 
of  the  withdrawal  of  Christ  into  the  wilderness  is  here  obvious 
and  striking.  But  whereas  Jesus  is  tempted  by  the  devil  to 
make  worldly  power  and  prestige  the  objectives  of  his  genius, 
Mahomet,  in  his  ecstatic  trance,  receives  a  visitation  from  the 
archangel  Gabriel.  Are  such  visitations  to  be  dismissed  as 
the  self-hallucinatory  dramatisations  of  intense  and  prolonged 
meditation  ?  Are  we,  on  the  other  hand,  justified  in  enter- 
taining the  possibility  of  some  objective  basis  of  these  mysteri- 
ous manifestations  ?  I,  for  one,  am  disinclined  to  commit 
myself  to  any  dogmatic  decision.  In  the  period  following  this 
"  annunciation,"  Mahomet,  formerly  so  genial  and  debonair, 
became  worn  and  haggard,  and  more  and  more  subject  to  fits 
of  abstraction.  Some  ten  years  later,  when,  after  expulsion 
from  Tayef,  Mahomet  had  taken  refuge  in  the  desert,  he,  while 
reading  the  Koran  x  after  his  evening  prayer  in  a  solitary  place, 
was  overheard  by  a  company  of  passing  Genii,  who,  having 
paused  awhile  to  listen,  expressed  their  belief  in  the  doctrine. 
Shortly  after  this  occurred  the  famous  night-journey  to  Jeru- 
salem, and  thence  to  the  Seventh  Heaven. 

And  St.  Francis  d'Assisi ;    is  it  possible  to  overstate  the 

1  Reciting  it,  perhaps,  for  it  is  doubtful  if  he  knew  how  to  read. 


314  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

significance  of  his  many  withdrawals  into  the  mysterious  depths 
of  his  pure  and  ardent  spirit  ?  Poverty  herself  seems  to  hold 
a  less  vital  relation  to  the  needs  of  its  aspiring  passion.  The 
long  hours  spent  in  a  cave  near  Assisi  at  the  time  of  his  con- 
version, in  prayer  and  weeping,  produced  a  profound  change 
in  his  nature  and  demeanour,  just  as  was  the  case  with  Mahomet. 
He  became  possessed  by  a  spirit  of  passionate  charity  ;  once 
on  meeting  a  leper,  hardly  human  in  his  disfigurement,  he  kissed 
the  bloated  hand  which  he  afterwards  filled  with  money.  The 
need  of  solitary  meditation  henceforth  battled  in  his  mind 
with  that  call  to  evangelical  work  which  could  not  long  be 
resisted.  Tradition  states  that  he  practised  nine  times  a  year 
a  Lenten  fast  and  meditation.  He  is  reputed  to  have  sub- 
sisted for  forty  days  on  a  single  loaf  of  bread,  alone  on  an  island 
in  Lake  Thrasymene.  Characteristically,  he  refused  to  make 
his  abstinence  complete,  lest  comparisons  might  be  invited 
with  the  fast  of  his  Lord  in  the  wilderness.  The  donation  to 
his  Order  by  Abbot  Maccabeo  of  the  caves  of  the  Carceri, 
situated  among  rocks  overhanging  a  lonely  gorge,  provided 
an  ideal  place  of  retreat  when  occasion  offered.  Anotler 
such  was  on  Monte  Alverno,  an  isolated  peak  in  the  Casentino, 
given  in  1213  by  Count  Orlando.  Thither  it  was  that  he  re- 
paired in  1224  (set.  43)  for  that  supreme  vigil,  where,  after 
weeks  of  unremitting  prayer  and  fasting,  he  had  a  vision  of 
Christ  crucified,  signifying  acceptance  of  his  passion.  "  When 
the  vision  faded,  he  found  upon  hands  and  feet  and  side  the 
marks  of  the  Lord's  body.  From  a  wound  on  his  right  side 
oozed  a  few  drops  of  blood,  and  through  his  hands  and  feet 
were  black  fleshy  growths,  resembling  nails,  piercing  from 
side  to  side."  1  Truly,  in  the  language  of  the  Fioretti,  "  so 
much  did  the  fervour  of  devotion  increase  in  him,  that  he 
altogether  transformed  himself  into  Jesus  through  love  and 
pity." 
j??  jMLuther,  except  perhaps  in  the  days  of  his  early  manhood, 

1  Renan  suggests  that  the  marks  of  the  stigmata  were  imprinted  by  Friar 
Elias  on  the  dead  body  of  St.  Francis,  of  which  he  had  the  disposition  during  a 
whole  night.  A  popular  tumult  followed  the  refusal  of  Elias  to  allow  the 
multitude  to  view  the  body. 


MAHOMET. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  315 

following  his  conversion,  and  except  during  the  period  of  his 
enforced  seclusion  in  the  Wartburg,  where  he  was  tormented 
by  diabolical  manifestations — strange  rumblings  in  a  chest, 
falling  sounds  on  the  stairs,  a  black  dog  in  his  bed — seems 
to  have  felt  no  habitual  need  of  solitude.  But,  at  table,  he 
often  became  abstracted,  plunged  in  deep  and  anxious  thought, 
and  would  sometimes  keep  a  cloister-like  silence  throughout 
the  meal.  Once  the  spell  of  silence  was  broken,  conversation 
flowed  freely,  even  merrily,  enough. 

Emerson,  all  his  life  long,  was  a  lover  of  solitude,  which 
he  courted  mainly  in  the  form  of  rambles  through  unfrequented 
woodlands.  He  describes  with  gusto  how,  on  a  cloudy  June 
day,  he  would  put  on  his  oldest  clothes' and  hat,  "slink  away  to 
the  whortleberry  bushes,  and  slip  witlr  the  greatest  satisfaction 
into  a  little  cow-path,"  where  he  could  "  defy  observation." 
Thus  the  seer  deliberately  "  hunted  thoughts,"  as  lesser  men 
hunt  game  in  the  forest. 


XI 

POWER  IN  THE   CRUCIBLE— Continued 
II — WOMAN 

Classification  of  sexual  types — Ambiguities — Need  of  detachment — Woman 
in  relation  to  man's  ideals — Sexual  versatility  of  genius — Examples — The 
higher  monogamy. 

No  investigation  of  the  types  of  human  greatness  could  be  in  any 
way^satisfactory — it  is  futile  to  talk  of  "  completeness  "  in  such  a 
connection — which  ignored  the  great  question  of  their  sexual 
proclivities.  In  no  other  manifestation  of  temperament  or 
character  are  more  significant  glimpses  to  be  obtained  of  the 
fundamental  spiritual  attitude  towards  life  and  its  responsi- 
bilities, whose  diagnosis  is  the  ultimate  desideratum  of  ethological 
scrutiny.  A  man's  conception  of  womanhood  in  general,  and  of 
his  relation  thereto,  is  one  of  the  main  expressions,  perhaps  the 
main  expression  of  his  general  instinctive  bias  :  it  colours  for 
good  or  evil  his  entire  emotional  and  intellectual  being,  and 
largely  determines  his  rank  in  the  scale  of  spiritual  values. 
"To  be  mistaken  in  the  fundamental  problem  of  '  man  and 
woman,'  "  exclaims  Nietzsche,  "  to  deny  here  the  profoundest 
antagonism  and  the  necessity  for  an  eternally  hostile  tension 
.  .  .  that  is  a  typical  sign  of  shallowmindedness  ;  and  a  thinker 
who  has  proved  himself  shallow  at  this  dangerous  spot — shallow 
in  instinct ! — may  generally  be  regarded  as  suspicious,  nay  more, 
as  betrayed,  as  discovered."  It  is  here,  however,  a  question 
of  mere  opinion,  of  theories  about  womanhood,  whereas  I  am 
concerned  with  a  still  more  momentous  matter,  with  conduct  in 
relation  to  women.  But  by  way  of  indicating  a  point  of  view 

which  underlies  much  that  will  be  said  in  the  ensuing  chapter, 

316 


ST.    KRAXCIS   OK    ASSISI. 
From  ,i  statue  />)•  Manuel  I'u.va. 


To  face  p.  316. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE 


317 


I  will  venture  another  and  a  kindred  quotation.  "  Marriage," 
wisely  remarks  R.L.S.,  "  is  like  life  in  this — that  it  is  a  field  of 
battle,  and  not  a  bed  of  roses." 

Roughly  speaking,  men  may  be  divided  into  three  great 
classes  : — 

(1)  Monogamists,  (2)  Polygamists,  and  (3)  Celibates ; 
and,  by  way  of  preliminary  to  our  discussion,  I  propose,  therefore, 
to  divide  the  subjects  of  our  present  investigation  into  these 
primary  groups.  But  the  titles  must  be  understood  as  applied 
in  a  physiological  and  psychological,  not  in  the  mere  legal  sense. 
And,  even  so,  the  classification  is,  at  best,  merely  provisional. 
Ambiguities  and  perplexities  meet  us  on  the  threshold:  Beethoven, 
for  example,  since  he  never  married  (at  least  in  the  legal  sense), 
I  have  classed  among  the  celibates.  But  he  was  always  in  love  ; 
he  loved  many  women,  and  might  with  great  show  of  propriety 
be  classed  as  a  (spiritual)  polygamist.  Such  nuances  I  intend  for 
the  present,  of  set  purpose,  to  ignore,  but  they  should  not  be 
forgotten.  Here,  then,  is  our  provisional  classification  :— 


I.  Monogamists. 


(a)  William  the  Silent 
Drake 
Cromwell 
Lincoln 


(a)  Caesar 

Charlemagne 

Napoleon 

Nelson 


(6)  Cervantes 
Mozart 
Scott 


(c)  Bacon 
Galileo 
Harvey 
Hegel 
Darwin 


II.  Polygamists. 


(b)  Dante 
Titian  (?) 
Goethe  (?) 
Turner 


III.  Celibates. 


(a)  Richelieu  (b)  Leonardo       (c)  Descartes 

Frederick  the  Great  ( ? )     Beethoven  ( ? )     Spinoza 
Flaubert  (?)        Newton 
Leibnitz 
Kant 


(d)  M.  Aurelius 
Luther 
Renan 
Emerson 


(d)  Augustine  (?) 
Mahomet 


(d)  Jesus 
Paul(?) 
Gregory 
Francis 


The  following  points  are  to  be  observed  as  justifying  or  qualifying 
certain  items  in  the  above  category.  William  of  Orange  was 
four  times  married,  and  his  second  wife,  Anne  of  Saxony,  was  still 


3i8  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

living  when  he  married  Charlotte  of  Bourbon.  Apart,  however, 
from  the  fact  that  she  had  long  before  deserted  him  and  con- 
tracted an  illicit  alliance  with  John  Rubens  in  Cologne,  Anne 
was  now,  and  had  for  some  years  been,  insane.  To  his  brother 
John,  William  wrote  justifying  his  new  marriage,  not  on  the 
ground  of  legal  technicalities,  for  which,  however,  he  did  not 
neglect  to  provide,  but  on  that  of  substantial  right  and  wrong. 
William  of  Orange  was  essentially  of  the  domesticated  or  constant 
type.  Goethe,  on  the  other  hand,  was  essentially  fickle :  I 
therefore,  since  he  was  no  celibate,  place  him  among  the  poly- 
gamists,  of  which  decision  he  would  himself  have  been  the  last 
to  complain.  Augustine  claims  to  have  been  faithful  to  the  bed 
of  the  mistress  by  whom  he  was  the  father  of  Adeodatus,  but  the 
promptitude  with  which  he  supplied  her  place  on  her  departure 
from  Italy,  and  the  general  indications  of  sexual  irregularities  in 
the  accounts  given  of  his  youth,  must  be  taken  into  consideration. 
One  might  say  that  he  passed  through  all  three  stages,  beginning 
as  a  polygamist,  and  ending,  of  course,  as  a  celibate.  The 
celibacy  of  Frederick  the  Great  is  to  be  taken  cum  grano,  no 
doubt,  but  it  is  undeniable  that  he  was  but  slightly  attracted  to, 
rather  was,  upon  the  whole,  distinctly  repelled  by  women.  And 
it  seems  clear  that  his  marriage  was  never  consummated,  no  doubt 
for  sufficient  reasons.  The  fact  that  Flaubert  corresponded 
with  a  married  woman  for  eight  years,  and  that  he  had,  during  his 
visits  to  Paris,  frequent  opportunities  for  intimacy,  does  not,  in 
my  opinion,  vitiate  the  conclusion  that  the  affair  was,  on  his  side, 
essentially  Platonic.  Among  the  many  strange  contrasts  in 
Flaubert's  character,  his  intimate  friends  noted  the  voluptuous- 
ness of  his  imagination  and  the  purity  of  his  life.  From  first  to 
last  his  pleasures  were  entirely  literary.  I  include  among  the 
celibates  one  man,  Descartes,  who  was  the  father  of  an  illegiti- 
mate daughter.  With  regard  to  the  liaison  of  which  the  short- 
lived Francine's  birth  was  the  result,  Descartes  preserves  an 
absolute  reticence,  and  it  can  safely  be  regarded  as  a  mere  episode 
in  his  career. 

Some  rather  interesting  conclusions  may  be  drawn  from  an 
examination  of  this  table  of  sexual  proclivities.  Three-fourths 
of  the  whole  number  of  our  great  men  are  included  in  one  or 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  319 

other  of  the  two  largest  and  nearly  equal  groups,  viz.  Mono- 
gamists (16)  and  Celibates  (14).  The  remaining  one-fourth 
belong  to  the  Polygamous  category.  Among  the  domesticated 
or  monogamous  group  all  types  are  well  represented,  but  with 
a  slight  excess  of  the  intellectual  and  a  deficiency  of  the  aesthetic 
temperaments.  All  types  are  also  to  be  found  among  the  celi- 
bates, but,  here,  while  men  of  action  and  men  of  aesthetic 
temperament  are  in  a  minority,  the  intellectual  and  the  ethico- 
religious  type  are  both  to  the  fore.  The  most  striking  fact  with 
regard  to  the  polygamists  or  free-lovers  is  the  entire  absence  of 
names  belonging  to  the  class  of  scientific  discoverers  or  philo- 
sophers, and  the  equal  predominance  of  men  of  action  and 
members  of  the  aesthetic  class. 

If  now  we  consider  in  order  the  sexual  proclivities  of  our 
four  types  of  greatness,  we  find  the  following  indications  : — 

(1)  Men  of  Action  tend  to  monogamy  or  promiscuity  in 
about  equal  proportion  ;  a  few  may  be  celibate. 

(2)  Poets,    Artists,     and     Composers     are     found     in    all 
groups  ;  there  is  a  slight  preponderance  of  the  tendency  to  free 
love. 

(3)  Scientific  Discoverers   or  Philosophers,   considered   to- 
gether, are  equally  disposed  towards  monogamy  and  celibacy  ; 
the  tendency  to  promiscuity  is  absent  among  my  examples. 

(4)  The  Ethical  and  Religious  Reformers  are  equally  dis- 
posed to  monogamy  and  celibacy  ;  a  few  are  polygamous. 

Perhaps  we  shall  not  be  far  from  the  truth  if  we  regard 
monogamy  as  a  common  characteristic  of  men  of  every  type 
of  ability,  celibacy  as  the  speciality  of  Intellectuals  and  Re- 
formers, and  mental  or  physical  promiscuity  as  that  of  Men 
of  Action  and  Artists. 

The  first  step  to  be  taken  in  the  investigation  upon  which 
we  are  now  embarking,  that  of  masculine  genius  in  its  relation 
to  Woman,  is  the  clearing  of  our  minds  of  cant,  the  renunciation 
of  catchwords  and  "  moral  "  preconceptions.  I  refer  to  such 
terms  as  "  monogamic  ideal,"  "  marriage  as  a  sacrament," 
"  the  sanctity  of  wedlock,"  "  the  insanity  of  asceticism,"  and 
a  host  of  others.  Such  question-begging  is  as  much  out  of 
court  here  as  the  angry  bigotry  with  which  Nietzsche,  by  his 


320  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

mere  ipse  dixi,  strives  to  reinstate  what  be  is  pleased  to  call 
the  "  Oriental "  view  of  the  necessary  subjection  of  woman, 
as  the  sole  tenable  view  of  a  reasoning  being.  "  Two  things 
are  wanted  by  the  true  man,"  cries  his  Zarathustra  :  "  danger 
and  play.  Therefore  he  seeketh  woman  as  the  most  dangerous 
toy."  And  the  sage  on  his  way  to  visit  one  of  her  fair  sisters 
is  adjured  by  the  little  old  woman  to  "  remember  his  whip." 
All  very  well  :  very  picturesque,  and  very  German ;  but 
Science  accepts  nothing  on  faith,  not  even  the  eternal  fitness 
of  wife-beating,  any  more  than  the  self-evident  supremacy  of 
the  "  monogamic  ideal." 

Let  us,  on  the  contrary,  "  conceive  it  possible  "  that  our 
"  good  and  just  "  moralists  may  be  mistaken  ;  that  the  ultimate 
goal  of  progress  may  be  something  far  other  than  they  have  so 
obligingly  staked  out  in  advance  for  our  accommodation  ;  that 
there  may  be  not  one,  but  several,  "  highest  "  types  of  morality  ; 
and  that  it  may  be  a  fatal  error  to  confide  that  a  good  time 
is  coming  when  men  (and  women)  of  the  most  various  and 
antithetical  temperaments  and  capacities  will  obligingly 
conform  to  one  single  stereotyped  regime  of  "  the  fair  and 
the  fit."  That  our  standard  for  the  appraisement  of  the 
conflicting  ideals  must  be  ultimately  an  ethical  and  psycho- 
logical, and,  above  all,  a  social  standard,  may  readily  be  admitted. 
Mere  personal  satisfaction  does  not  carry  us  very  far  towards 
the  justification  of  what  appear  on  other  grounds  to  be  sexual 
vagaries  and  aberrations.  We  rightly  demand  also  to  know 
where  we  come  in  ;  how  we  and  our  posterity  are  to  be  affected 
by  the  concession  of  what,  prima  facie,  we  consider  extravagant 
demands.  But  we  are  not  therefore  absolved  from  the  obliga- 
tion of  duly  weighing  and  considering  these  demands,  and, 
in  the  absence  of  precise  and  verifiable  counter-indications, 
conceding  their  validity.  "We  must,  I  repeat,  "  conceive  it 
possible  "  that,  in  our  fine  zeal  for  the  "  Cause  of  Righteous- 
ness," our  hasty  repudiation  of  the  unfamiliar,  our  holy  horror 
of  the  crude  unsanctioned  fact,  we — "  may  be  mistaken."  Let. 
us  recall  the  sanity  of  Luther,  who,  in  renouncing  the  vows 
which  constrained  him  to  a  continence  for  which  he  knew 
himself  unfitted,  abstained  from  condemning  the  celibacy  of 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  321 

those  who  "  had  the  gift."  All  ethical  ideals  are  ultimately 
traceable  to  the  precepts  and  examples  of  what  the  world 
has  agreed  to  regard  as  pre-eminent  individuals,  in  so  far,  at 
least,  as  they  are  not  mere  products  of  social  expediency  and 
use  and  wont.  In  considering  the  sexual  relations  of  those 
of  our  great  men  whose  lives,  in  this  respect,  seem  specially 
significant,  I  shall,  so  far  as  possible,  avoid  criticism  of  their 
fundamental  marital  or  unmarital  tendency,  merely  calling 
attention  to  the  particulars  in  which  they  conformed  or  failed 
to  conform  to  its  implicit  requirements. 

Into  the  question  of  the  fertility  of  the  marital  unions  of 
great  men  as  compared  with  those  of  undistinguished  in- 
dividuals, I  do  not  propose  to  enter,  as  it  is  a  matter  of  physio- 
logical rather  than  psychological  interest.  We  have,  however, 
in  the  course  of  the  present  work,  incidentally  come  upon 
facts  decidedly  suggestive  of  the  relative  sterility  of  genius. 
And,  as  bearing  on  this  point,  I  will  call  attention  to  the 
interesting  fact  that  William  the  Silent  and  Oliver  Cromwell, 
who,  in  my  opinion,  were  great  rather  by  a  magnification  and 
intensification  of  the  normal  capacities  of  ordinary  law-abiding 
citizens,  than  in  the  unique  and  qualitative  way  which  we 
associate  with  genius  properly  so  called,  both  showed  in  their 
domestic  life  an  entire  absence  of  the  strange  or  aberrant. 
William  was  married  four  times,  first  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 
and  last  at  that  of  fifty.  Cromwell  was  married  once,  at 
twenty-one,  and  for  the  thirty-eight  years  of  his  married  life 
was  all  that  a  loving  husband  and  father  could  be.  Each  was 
the  progenitor  of  a  fairly  numerous  family  of  healthy  children ; 
and  this,  I  consider,  strongly  confirms  my  diagnosis  of  the 
quantitative  rather  than  qualitative  nature  of  their  distinction. 
Contrast  the  relative  barrenness  of  the  unions  of  Caesar,  Lincoln, 
Goethe,  and  Napoleon — all  men  of  temperamental  genius. 
Scott,  again,  a  man  of  prodigious  talent,  but  essentially  com- 
monplace in  most  respects,  was  of  the  domesticated  type,  and 
was  the  father  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters.  The  most 
romantic  feature  of  Sir  Walter's  career  was  his  lifelong  devotion 
to  the  memory  of  his  first  love,  whom  he  did  not  marry — a 
flame  that  was  never  quenched.  To  the  end  of  his  life,  he  said, 
21 


322  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

he  always  dreamed  of  his  lady  of  the  green  mantle  before  any 
great  misfortune. 

But,  for  our  purpose,  the  point  of  most  importance  is  the 
effect  of  their  married  life  upon  the  character  and,  through  that, 
the  work  of  great  men.  It  is  in  this  aspect  that  the  married 
state  (and,  in  fact,  all  sexual  relations,  also)  justifies  the  phrase 
of  Stevenson,  when  he  calls  it  a  "  field  of  battle,  and  not  a  bed 
of  roses."  William  of  Orange,  when,  after  two  years'  higgling, 
he  won  the  hand  of  Anne  of  Saxony,  whom,  when  he  proposed 
the  alliance,  he  had  not  as  much  as  beheld,  no  doubt  accounted 
himself  lucky  in  securing  the  alliance  of  her  father,  Duke 
Maurice,  the  great  Lutheran  chief,  who  had  shaken  the  very 
throne  of  the  Emperor  Charles  v.  The  woman  herself  was 
evidently,  in  his  view,  a  negligible  factor.  Such  simplicity  met 
with  its  appropriate  reward.  Anne  was  proud,  sensual,  jealous, 
and  intensely  selfish.  A  Nassau,  in  her  opinion,  was  more 
fit  to  be  her  domestic  than  her  husband.  The  Imperial  pomp 
of  their  wedding  at  Leipsic — five  thousand  guests  were  enter- 
tained thereat — was  no  doubt  congenial ;  but  imagine  the 
bitterness  with  which  this  haughty  girl  realised  that  she  had 
married  a  man  essentially  indifferent  to  all  that  she  prized 
most,  insanely  bent  on  the  pursuit  of  ideals  that  must  ruin  his 
worldly  career  and  her  own  position.  In  his  dark  hour  she 
abandoned  him  ruthlessly,  never  to  return.  Fortunate  for  his 
cause  and  for  him,  since  the  love  of  such  women  is  by  far  more 
dangerous  to  heroic  souls  than  their  scorn  or  their  hatred. 
The  demoralisation  of  a  demigod  becomes  intelligible  when  we 
learn  that  destiny  has  united  him  to  a  worldling  and  a  scold. 
Socrates  appears  to  have  been  proof  against  at  least  one  term 
of  the  combination  (they  are  seldom  unallied,  however),  which 
accounts  perhaps  for  his  ability  to  drink  the  young  bloods  of 
Athens  under  the  table.  I  will,  however,  venture  the  asser- 
tion that  in  every  woman  worth  her  salt  there  is  somewhere 
hidden  a  worldling  and  a  scold.  It  is  a  question  of  degrees  : 
tenderness  may  be  veiled,  but  must  not  be  eclipsed.  Men  are 
such  inveterate  dreamers,  such  ghost-hunters,  that  they  need  to 
be  anchored  to  mother  Earth  and  to  Nature.  The  wife  who 
cannot  scold  is  defenceless  ;  her  intuitions  will  be  ignored  and 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  323 

her  tenderness  undervalued.  Thus  Cromwell  ignored  his  meek 
wife,  so  far,  that  is,  as  his  public  work  was  concerned,  turning 
for  counsel  to  his  mother,  a  dame  of  shrewd  sense  and  mettle. 
The  fact  is — and  it  must  not  be  blinked — that  it  is  not  to  the 
wife  of  his  bosom  that  a  man  usually  looks  for  sympathy  with, 
and  encouragement  of,  his  inmost  cherished  purpose.  Enough 
if  she  learn  to  respect  it,  or  even  to  tolerate  it,  as  an  irremov- 
able rival  of  her  own  claim  on  his  allegiance.  Too  often  she 
succeeds  in  her  querulous  insistence  upon  its  abandonment, 
her  demand  that  she  and  her  happiness  be  not  sacrificed  to 
the  dreams  of  an  egoist,  that  he  devote  himself  exclusively 
tc  the  enhancement  of  his  (read  her}  prestige  and  prosperity. 
The  duel  of  the  sexes  takes  largely  the  form  of  a  mutual  desire 
of  each  for  the  exploitation  of  the  other.  A  man  is  often  the 
gainer  by  the  leaven  of  worldliness  instilled  into  his  aims  by 
importunate  femininity.  But  woe  to  him  who  yields  one  jot 
in  essentials,  who  surrenders  his  manhood,  becomes  the  mere 
hodman  of  a  servile  expediency.  His  reward  will  be  the  in- 
evitable contempt  of  the  instrument  of  his  downfall.  A  woman 
expects  to  find  in  man  something  inflexible,  something  proof 
against  the  assaults  of  her  own  lower  nature.  Ruthless  in  act 
— for  she  knows  nothing  of  chivalry — in  her  inmost  heart  she 
does  homage  to  integrity.  She  will  try  it  to  the  utmost,  will 
destroy  it  if  it  prove  destructible  ;  then,  like  a  child  who  has 
wantonly  eviscerated  her  doll,  will  bemoan  her  loss,  and  bemock 
the  cause  of  her  disillusionment.  The  man  is  henceforth  her 
slave,  and  she  will  prove  a  relentless  taskmistress.  For  she 
pities  only  where  she  loves,  and  love  and  contempt  cannot 
live  together. 

It  is  the  pathos  rather  than  the  dignity  of  high  effort  that 
appeals  to  the  best  in  woman.  On  the  heels  of  a  mood  of 
ruthless  recrimination,  when  every  word  has  been  steeped  in 
gall  and  venom,  there  comes  a  sudden  perplexing  change.  A 
glimpse  of  the  weary  droop  in  the  shoulders  of  her  departing 
victim  induces  tears  of  maternal,  of  divine  compunction.  The 
transition  from  devil  to  angel  is  for  woman  the  work  of  an 
instant.  Paradox  incarnate  :  the  infliction  of  unendurable 
pain  is  often  her  veiled  tribute  to  qualities  beyond  her  compre- 


324  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

hension  but  not  beyond  her  worship,  is  often  the  prelude  to  her 
most  entrancing  mood. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  imagined  that  I  would  imply  on 
the  part  of  women  an  inability  to  appreciate,  or  to  sympathise 
with,  ideal  aims.  In  all  relations  between  men  and  women, 
even  those  of  mother  and  son,  of  brother  and  sister,  or  of  father 
and  daughter,  the  subtle  pervasive  sex-element  certainly  plays 
its  part.  On  the  other  hand,  women,  as  individuals,  differ  as 
infinitely  as  men,  and  in  no  respect  more  than  in  susceptibility 
and  responsiveness  to  the  appeal  of  noble  emotions  and  exalted 
thoughts.  Full  comprehension  may  often  be  lacking,  yet  by 
intuitive  appreciation  the  void  is  so  adequately  filled  that  the 
seeker  for  sympathy  and  encouragement  has  no  sense  of  mis- 
understanding or  constraint  in  the  communication  of  his 
intent.  It  is  only  where,  as  between  husband  and  wife,  the 
inevitable  conflict  of  interests,  the  suspicion  of  rivalry,  the  fear 
of  committing  herself  to  the  unconditional  approval  of  aims 
prejudicial  to  her  own  dignity  or  comfort,  intervene,  that  woman 
shows  herself  slow  to  entertain,  or  at  least  to  embrace,  ideas 
full  of  menace  to  conventional  usage.  So  we  often  find  men 
of  great  and  audacious  aims  turning  now  to  this,  now  to  that 
woman,  culling  from  each  some  needful  stimulus  of  appreciation 
and  applause.  That  such  appreciation  is  never  wholly  feigned 
would  be  too  much  to  say  ;  it  is,  however,  oftener,  in  part,  not 
seldom  wholly,  sincere.  It  seems  to  be  admitted  by  those  best 
qualified  to  judge,  that  Lady  Nelson,  good  woman  that  she  was, 
failed  utterly  to  identify  herself  with  the  enthusiastic  side 
of  her  husband's  temperament.  She  was  always  warning  him 
against  imprudence,  boring  him  by  her  importunate  anxieties. 
In  fact  she  was  a  wet  blanket  where  the  things  that  lay  nearest 
to  his  heart  were  concerned.  This  was  a  fatal  error,  and  it 
supplied  an  opportunity  of  which  her  successful  rival,  Emma 
Hamilton,  availed  herself,  so  to  speak,  with  both  hands. 
Where  Lady  Nelson  had  been  cold  and  reticent,  she  was  effusive, 
nay  gushing.  She  shamelessly  pampered  and  fostered  Nelson's 
vanity,  corrupted  his  taste  by  incessant  flattery,  exploited  his 
renown,  and,  so  far  as  in  her  lay,  profaned  it  by  making  her  hero 
ridiculous.  "  That  she  ever  loved  him  is  doubtful,"  writes 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  325 

Mahan :  "  but  there  were  in  her  spirit  impulses  capable  of 
sympathetic  response  to  his  own  in  his  bravest  acts,  though 
not  in  his  noblest  motives.  It  is  inconceivable  that  duty  ever 
appealed  to  her  as  it  did  to  him,  nor  could  a  woman  of  innate 
nobility  of  character  have  dragged  a  man  of  Nelson's  masculine 
renown  about  England  and  the  Continent  till  he  was  the  mock 
of  all  beholders ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  never  could 
have  occurred  to  the  energetic,  courageous,  brilliant  Lady 
Hamilton,  after  the  lofty  deeds  and  stormy  dramatic  scenes 
of  St.  Vincent,  to  beg  him,  as  Lady  Nelson  did,  '  to  leave 
boarding  to  captains.'  Sympathy,  not  good  taste,  would  have 
withheld  her." 

I  shall  have  much  exceeded  my  aim,  if  in  what  has  been 
said  above  I  have  conveyed  the  impression  that  feminine  sym- 
pathy with  masculine  ambition  or  aspiration  is  in  all  cases  to 
be  regarded  as  a  mere  sex-lure,  a  masked  weapon  in  the  eternal 
duel  of  sex.  It  is  often  that  exclusively  or  in  great  measure, 
as  in  the  case  of  Lady  Hamilton  is  obvious  enough — but  it  is 
often,  too,  something  more  genuine  and  valuable.  Our  Scan- 
dinavian ancestors,  we  are  told,  never  undertook  any  military 
enterprise  of  moment  without  the  express  approval  of  their 
womankind.  They  knew  well  the  truth — re-stated  by  that  by 
no  means  partial  critic,  Otto  Weininger — that  no  woman,  not 
even  the  stupidest,  can  be  so  dull  as,  on  occasion,  the  cleverest 
man  can  be.  The  counsel  of  woman,  when  she  restricts  herself 
to  counsel  and  does  not  seek  to  dictate,  is  always  worth  having 
and  weighing  with  care.  Here  I  would  call  special  attention 
to  the  important  part  played  in  the  lives  of  great  men,  par- 
ticularly men  of  action,  by  their  mothers  or  by  other  women 
of  more  advanced  age  than  the  heroes  themselves.  Csesar, 
Charlemagne,  William  the  Silent,  Cromwell,  Napoleon — all 
men  of  extraordinary  independence  and  force  of  character — 
were  all  influenced  probably  more  by  their  mothers  (in  what 
concerned  their  public  life  and  aims)  than  by  any  other  woman 
with  whom  they  had  to  do.  The  case  of  Augustine  also  deserves 
mention :  his  great  work  for  the  Church  is  a  debt  which  she 
owes  mainly  to  the  patience  and  tact  of  Monica.  If  any  one 
ever  influenced  Lincoln,  which  one  biographer  denies,  it  was  his 


326  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

dearly  loved  stepmother.  Mahomet's  first  wife,  Cadijah,  was 
so  much  his  senior  that  there  must  have  been  an  almost  maternal 
quality  in  her  love  for  the  prophet.  It  should  never  be  forgotten 
that  she,  from  the  first,  accepted  as  genuine  the  divine  mission 
which  others  derided  and  spurned.  In  this,  moreover,  she  was 
acting  in  direct  opposition  to  her  own  material  and  social 
interests  as  a  woman  of  wealth  and  position.  In  view  of  such 
facts  it  is  idle  to  deny  that  there  are  women  capable  of  tran- 
scending the  personal  view  and  venturing  their  little  all  in  the 
cause  which  they  feel  to  be  worthy  of  such  self-sacrifice.  It  is 
perhaps  truer  to  say  that  they  embrace  the  cause  for  the  sake 
of  the  man  they  love,  and  who  loves  it,  than  that  they  love 
the  cause  for  its  own  abstract  beauty  or  greatness,  though  of 
these  they  may  be  fully  sensible,  nevertheless.  And  I  do  not 
question  that  the  urgent  need  of  capturing  or  retaining  the  first 
place  in  the  hero's  confidence  and  affection  stimulates  their 
perception  of  the  excellency  of  the  cause  which  lies  nearest  to 
his  heart. 

Still,  it  remains  true,  upon  the  whole,  that  a  woman  whose 
happiness  and  prosperity  are  directly  dependent  upon  those  of 
her  husband  will,  however  sympathetic  she  may  have  been  at 
the  outset — that  is,  before  she  had  realised  her  personal  concern 
in  the  matter — be  likely  to  resent  his  absorption  in  ends,  how- 
ever exalted,  tending  to  endanger  their  common  prospects  of 
material  and  social  success.  This  is  an  inevitable  outcome  of 
the  economic  subjection  of  her  sex,  and  it  ill  becomes  us  men  to 
complain.  The  wiser  course  is  that  which  has  been  freely 
practised  by  great  men  in  need  of  that  sympathy  without  which 
the  tender  green  shoots  of  endeavour  can  hardly  survive 
germination,  much  less  grow  and  bear  fruit.  Sympathy  must 
be  sought  where  it  is  to  be  found, — from  the  wife,  if  she  be 
magnanimous  enough  to  transcend  the  personal  view  of  the 
matter  in  question  ;  if  not,  from  whomsoever  has  it  to  give. 

Many-sided  men  are  often  considered  fickle  because,  feel- 
ing, justly  or  otherwise,  that  they  have  much  to  give,  they 
demand  much  of  the  woman  to  whom  they  are  for  the  moment 
drawn.  Stirred  now  by  sense,  now  by  passion,  then  by  senti- 
ment, or,  it  may  be,  intellect,  each  transient  mood  seeks  response, 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  327 

failing  of  which  in  one  direction  it  will  be  sought  in  another. 
The  best  a  woman  has  to  give  can  be  won  perhaps  only  by  him 
who  gives  unreservedly  what  is  best  in  himself.  But  suppose 
that  this  best  is  not  at  his  own  disposal — is  already  irretriev- 
ably dedicated  to  some  work  whose  prior  claim  he  is  helpless 
to  silence  or  deny  ?  She  may  console  herself  like  Frederica, 
abandoned  by  Goethe,  with  the  thought  that  she  has  been 
loved  by  a  man  of  genius,  as  such  men  understand  and  are 
capable  of  love.  And  she  may  recall  the  wise  maxim  of  La 
Rochefoucauld  :  "On  passe  souvent  de  1'amour  a  1'ambition, 
mais  on  ne  revient  guere  de  1'ambition  a  1'amour." 

To  no  man  does  this  maxim  apply  more  obviously  than  to 
Julius  Caesar,  with  whom,  while  marriage  was  a  means  to  public 
advancement,  the  various  love-affairs  which,  if  contemporary 
rumour  can  be  trusted,  he  permitted  himself  as  occasion  offered, 
were  never  allowed  to  rank  higher  than  as  mere  diversions. 
His  heart  was  at  all  times  governed  by  his  head.  Every  one 
has  heard  how,  after  the  escapade  of  Clodius,  who,  for  love 
of  Caesar's  second  wife  Pompeia,  gained  access  disguised  as 
a  woman  to  the  festival  of  the  Bona  Dea  in  his  palace,  he 
divorced  her,  not  as  being  guilty  but  because  "  Caesar's  wife 
must  be  above  suspicion."  For  such  a  man  to  have  divorced 
any  woman  on  moral  grounds  would  have  been  hypocritical ; 
Caesar  was  never  censorious,  but  he  knew  that  public  opinion 
is  both  censorious  and  hypocritical.  Public  opinion  must 
therefore  be  conciliated,  and  Pompeia  must  go.  With  regard 
to  the  alleged  intrigue  of  Caesar  with  Cleopatra,  the  verdict 
must,  I  think,  be  one  of  "  not  proven."  Caesar's  ward  and 
successor  Augustus  executed  Caesarion,  the  supposed  son  of 
Caesar  and  Cleopatra,  as  a  pretender,  which,  though  not  con- 
clusive, would  have  been  a  bold  step  to  take  if  the  said  parent- 
age had  been  widely  accepted.  Caesar's  position  in  Egypt  at 
the  time  when  the  liaison  is  asserted  to  have  been  begun,  was 
too  precarious  to  offer  any  favourable  opportunity  for  phil- 
andering, even  if  we  grant  the  likelihood  that  such  a  man  would 
stultify  himself  by  needless  complication  of  sufficiently  grave 
responsibilities,  would  thus  vitiate  his  endeavour  to  settle  the 
affairs  of  Egypt  by  a  dangerous  and  undignified  self-indulgence. 


328  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  Caesar  adopted  in  Rome,  probably 
under  the  influence  of  his  mother,  a  regimen  of  almost  ascetic 
simplicity,  and  showed  evident  concern  for  the  general  reform 
of  morals.  The  fact  that  Cleopatra  was  now  in  the  city  lends, 
therefore,  small  support  to  the  belief  in  the  prior  existence  or 
continuance  of  any  such  connection.  What  freedom  Csesar,  in 
common  with  most  men  of  his  day,  allowed  himself,  was,  in  short, 
so  far  as  might  be,  a  thing  apart  from  his  national  aims  and 
activities.  Men  who  achieve  supreme  distinction  and  full 
contemporary  recognition,  being  almost  always,  too,  personalities 
essentially  magnetic  and  compelling,  exercise  a  sort  of  glamorous 
fascination  upon  the  senses  and  minds  of  susceptible  people,  and 
especially  those  of  women.  The  same  thing,  on  a  lower  plane, 
takes  place  in  connection  with  popular  actors,  who  are  invari- 
ably besieged  with  amorous  lucubrations  penned  by  senti- 
mental schoolgirls,  and  not  by  schoolgirls  only.  Glory  of  any 
kind  or  degree,  even  that  of  a  murderer  or  a  brigand,  is  a  flame 
into  which  numbers  of  silly  moths  will  flutter  in  a  perfect  frenzy 
of  self-immolation.  Who  can  doubt  that  Ceesar  in  his  day 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  many  unsought  protestations  and  solicita- 
tions ?  and  if,  now  and  then,  a  more  than  usually  enticing 
voice  won  him  to  a  transient  regard  of  the  fair  but  frail 
suppliant,  what  man  among  us  dares  cast  the  first  stone  ? 
A  libertine  sleeps  (or  wakes)  in  the  heart  of  each  one  of  us  ; 
and  not  only  those  women  who  openly  profess  the  most 
ancient  of  callings  (nor  all  of  them,  for  that  matter)  are  born 
courtesans. 

"  Verum  operi  longo  fas  est  obrepere  somnum."  If  even 
Homer  may  nod,  shall  Hercules  be  denied  a  rest  by  the  way- 
side ?  If  so,  who  will  enforce  the  restriction  ? 

The  first  recorded  love-affair  of  Charlemagne  was  the  contrac- 
tion of  a  left-handed  union  with  Himiltrude,  by  whom  he  be- 
came the  father  of  Pepin  the  Hunchback,  This  illegitimate 
son  was  in  due  course  to  prove  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  his  father. 
In  800  A.D.  he  joined  in  the  conspiracy  of  certain  Frankish 
magnates  against  the  throne.  The  plot  was  discovered  in  time, 
and,  though  Pepin's  life  was  spared,  he  was  forced  to  take  the 
tonsure.  Two  years  after  his  accession,  Charles  (set.  27)  married 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  329 

Desiderata,  daughter  of  Didier,  King  of  Lombardy.  This 
purely  political  union  was,  for  somewhat  unintelligible  reasons, 
arranged  for  him  by  his  mother3  Queen  Bertha.  It  had  proved 
highly  objectionable  to  Pope  Stephen,  who  regarded  Charles 
as  a  promising  ally,  and  desired  above  all  things  the  total  de- 
struction of  the  Lombard  nation.  *  He  had  accordingly  denounced 
the  proposed  union  in  the  most  violent  fashion.  Charles,  for 
his  part,  soon  wearied  of  the  sickly  and  barren  Desiderata,  and, 
to  the  intense  vexation  of  his  mother,  divorced  her  in  the  year 
following  his  marriage,  and  at  once  took  to  wife  the  lovely 
Swabian,  Hildegarde,  a  mere  child.  We  are  told  that  several 
of  his  kinsmen  reproached  Charles  to  his  face  for  his  brutal 
faithlessness.  This  was  nevertheless  by  far  the  most  successful 
of  Charlemagne's  many  unions.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
he  loved  Hildegarde  sincerely,  and  that,  during  the  twelve  years 
of  her  married  life,  her  influence  upon  him  was  in  many  ways 
good.  After  her  death,  and  that  of  the  Queen  Mother  soon 
after,  there  is  a  noticeable  deterioration  of  morale,  a  growing 
tendency  to  yield  to  the  gross  and  brutal  elements  of  his  powerful 
nature.  His  third  (official)  wife,  Fastrada,  the  widowed 
daughter  of  an  Austrasian  Count,  was  as  much  detested  by  his 
subjects  as  Hildegarde  had  been  beloved.  Two  conspiracies 
against  the  throne  and  life  of  Charles  seem  to  be  attributable, 
in  the  main,  either  to  the  harshness  of  her  own  actions  or  to 
severities  induced  by  her  influence  upon  him.  "  Fastrada 
brought  to  Court  the  rancorous  feuds  and  savage  hatreds  of  her 
homeland ;  her  husband  indulged  her  thirst  for  vengeance, 
and  paid  dearly  for  doing  so."  She  died  about  ten  years  after 
their  marriage,  and  Charles,  now  aged  fifty-one,  soon  replaced 
her  by  marrying  Liutgard,  a  gentler  and  consequently  more 
popular  queen.  In  addition  to  these  four  legal  unions  and 
the  irregular  connection  with  Himiltrude,  Charles,  at  various 
periods  of  his  career,  contracted  a  good  many  of  what  his  clerical 
admirers  call  "  marriages  of  the  second  rank."  Among  his 
mistresses,  Eginhard  mentions  Gersuinda,  Regina,  and  Adelinda, 
by  all  of  whom  he  had  children  in  his  old  age.  For  political 
reasons  Charlemagne  forbade  his  daughters  to  marry.  In 
compensation,  perhaps,  he  connived  at  their  irregularities : 


330  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

they  shared  his  palace,  and  their  various  lovers  were  enter- 
tained without  let  or  hindrance.  The  fact  must  be  faced  that 
Charlemagne  was,  to  all  intents,  a  free  lover,  and  not  by  any 
means  in  the  best  sense  of  the  words.  Every  man  has  the 
defects  of  his  qualities ;  and  the  same  superabundant  virility 
and  impetuous,  overbearing  spirit  which  enabled  him  to  master 
and  coerce  into  at  least  provisional  unity  the  chaotic  turbulence 
of  his  Europe,  made  Charlemagne  in  one  sense  a  loose  liver, 
giving  free  rein  to  his  lust. 

Everybody  knows  the  story  of  how  little  Eugene  Beau- 
harnais  came  to  General  Bonaparte  requesting,  on  behalf  of 
his  mother,  Josephine,  the  return  of  the  guillotined  Viscount's 
sword.  Bonaparte,  to  his  credit  be  it  said,  seldom  failed  to 
avail  himself  of  the  chance  to  do  a  generous  and  graceful  action, 
where  due  deference  was  paid  to  his  authority  and  no  detrimental 
effects  on  his  own  interests  were  to  be  feared.  The  sword 
was  duly  returned,  and  the  viscountess  was  not  slow  for  her 
part  in  coming  to  thank  the  rising  man.  Bonaparte  had  already 
figured  in  several  little  affairs ;  he  was  eighteen  when  he  took 
to  his  apartments  a  woman  whom  he  met  one  night  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Palais  Royal.  Then  there  had  been  a  brief 
liaison  with  Madame  Turreau,  wife  of  an  influential  member 
of  the  Convention,  to  whose  exertions  he  probably  owed  the 
momentous  command  of  the  13th  Vendemiaire.  Finally  (so 
far  as  I  know),  there  was  the  semi-serious  betrothal  to  his 
"  little  wife,"  Desiree-Eugenie  Clara,  at  Marseilles,  a  pretty 
girl  of  sixteen.  In  Paris  he  found  women  more  alluring — she 
had  failed  to  seize  the  favourable  moment;  then  came  the 
meeting  with  Josephine,  and  Desiree's  chance  was  irretriev- 
ably lost.  Eager,  as  always,  to  atone,  he  subsequently  married 
her  to  Bernadotte, — made  her  the  Queen  of  Sweden.  The  fact 
remains  that  his  defection  had  broken  her  heart. 

Now  he  had  received  a  visit  of  thanks  from  "  a  lady,  a  great 
lady,  a  ci-devant  vicomtesse,  the  widow  of  a  President  of  the 
Constituent  Assembly,  a  courtier,  a  general  in  command  of  the 
army  of  the  Rhine.  All  of  which,  the  title  and  rank,  the  refine- 
ment, the  easy  and  aristocratic  grace  of  his  visitor,  made  a  great 
impression  upon  Bonaparte.  For  the  first  time,  the  provincial 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  331 

of  twenty-six,  hitherto  unnoticed  by  any  woman  of  this  class, 
found  himself  face  to  face  with  one  of  those  elegant,  seductive, 
delicate  beings  whom  he  had  hitherto  admired  from  afar." 
That  this  charmer's  financial  position  was  desperate  and  her 
social  standing  equivocal,  made  no  sort  of  difference.  These 
facts  were  cleverly  concealed.  That  Josephine  was  six  years 
his  senior,  doubtless  gave  her  an  advantage  in  what  was  on  her 
side  mainly  a  mere  game  of  skill,  and  on  his  a  matter  of  genuine 
passion.  "  Captivated  by  the  woman,  he  was  dazzled  by  the 
lady,  awed  by  her  air  of  dignity  and  breeding."  They  were 
married  in  March  of  the  next  year  (1796),  two  days  before 
Bonaparte  left  to  join  the  Army  of  Italy.  When,  after  exhausting 
all  conceivable  excuses,  including  the  encouragement  of  his  eager 
surmise  that  she  was  pregnant,  Josephine  at  last  condescended 
to  yield  to  his  impassioned  appeals  by  joining  him  in  Milan, 
she  was  accompanied  by  her  lover,  M.  Charles,  who,  whenever 
the  General  was  absent,  was  constantly  at  the  Palazzo  Serbelloni. 
It  was  in  1798,  during  the  voyage  from  Toulon  to  Malta  and 
thence  to  Alexandria,  that  Bonaparte  first  showed  uneasiness 
with  regard  to  his  wife's  reputation.  "  He  wished  to  make  sure  ; 
he  questioned  his  friends,  and  they  answered  him."  The  bond 
which  hitherto  he  himself  seems  to  have  regarded  as  sacred,  had 
been  broken ;  the  idea  of  divorce  at  once  dawned  upon  his 
mind  ;  and  he  considered  himself  now  free  to  amuse  him- 
self as  occasion  offered.  Josephine  had  only  herself  to  thank 
for  the  ultimate  rupture  :  in  the  days  of  his  most  ardent  devotion 
she  had  but  lightly  esteemed  the  love  of  a  hero.  Worst  of  all, 
when,  profiting  by  the  example  of  her  own  inconstancy,  he  too 
had  become  inconstant,  Josephine  made  the  fatal  error  of 
"  spying  upon  him,  and  paying  others  to  spy  upon  him,  abasing 
herself  by  the  most  unworthy  devices,  wearying  him  by  stormy 
scenes,  tears,  hysterics,  confiding  her  suspicions  to  any  one  who 
would  listen,  and,  in  default  of  evidence,  inventing  misde- 
meanours which  she  declared  she  had  herself  witnessed  and 
was  ready  to  attest  on  oath."  She  was  jealous,  and  had  not 
the  sense  to  hide  it.  Of  her  insane  extravagance,  of  her  treachery 
in  intriguing  with  her  husband's  bitterest  enemies  during  his 
absence  in  Egypt — since  these,  too,  had  been  generously 


332  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

pardoned, — the  least  said  the  soonest  mended.  Her  punish- 
ment was  long  in  coming :  she  fought  desperately  to  defer 
the  evil  day,  which  probably  would  never  finally  have  dawned 
but  for  her  husband's  full  realisation  of  the  fact  that  it  was 
not  his  love  that  she  valued,  but  the  splendour  of  the  destiny 
she  shared. 

Then,  too,  when  the  "  pear  "  had  been  plucked,  arose  the 
burning  question  of  issue,  the  need  of  a  son.  Napoleon's  mis- 
givings with  regard  to  his  own  reproductive  powers  (no  doubt 
carefully  fostered  by  Josephine)  may  have  been  partly  dis- 
pelled by  the  birth  of  a  child  in  August  1804  by  Madame , 

a  young  lady  of  the  Consular  Court,  married  to  a  man  thirty 
years  her  senior.  Of  this  child  (though  it  resembled  him  not 
at  all),  if  the  First  Consul  were  not  the  father,  it  was  doubtful 
whether  he  could  ever  be  the  father  of  any.  Two  years  later 
these  doubts  were  finally  dispelled,  when,  on  13th  December 
1806,  Eleonore,  the  divorced  wife  of  a  rascally  ex-quarter- 
master, gave  birth  to  a  son  of  whom  the  Emperor  was  the 
father.  Eleonore's  husband  having  been  convicted  of  forgery, 
she  had  managed  to  gain  access  to  the  household  of  Princess 
Caroline  (Murat's  wife),  and,  being  a  beautiful  and  graceful 
brunette  of  a  decidedly  "  coming  on "  disposition,  had  soon 
captured  Napoleon's  regard,  to  which  she  had  responded  with 
alacrity.  He  never  saw  her  after  1806,  but,  with  his  invari- 
able generosity,  gave  her  a  house  in  the  Hue  de  la  Victoire  and 
an  income  of  22,000  livres.  The  son,  Leon,  whom  Napoleon 
had  thought  seriously  of  adopting  as  his  heir,  had  a  strange 
and  adventurous  career,  and  died,  more  or  less  crazy,  in 
1881. 

Of  the  affaires  Foures  and  Grassini,  and  of  the  numerous 
actresses,  readers,  and  female  tuft-hunters  who,  self-invited, 
or  with  the  merest  show  of  hesitation,  at  one  time  or  another 
were  ushered  up  the  secret  staircase  at  the  Tuileries,  or  into 
the  secret  suite  at  the  Chateau  de  Compiegne,  I  shall,  since 
this  is  no  chronique  scandaleuse,  but  a  sober,  psychological 
inquiry,  content  myself  with  the  mere  mention.  Such  dalli- 
ance he  himself  described  as  "  amusements  in  which  my  affec- 
tions have  no  part."  The  majority  of  these  episodes  fall 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  333 

between  1800  and  1810,  that  is,  between  his  thirty-first  and 
forty-first  years. 

There  was  nothing  truly  conjugal  in  the  relations  of  Napoleon 
and  Josephine.  She  was,  at  best,  a  favoured  and  very  costly 
mistress ;  if  he  had  ever  dreamed  that  she  had  sympathy, 
inspiration,  to  offer,  he  was  quickly  disillusioned.  The  woman 
whom  Napoleon  loved  best,  most  disinterestedly,  who,  more- 
over, appealed  to  the  highest  as  well  as  the  most  romantic 
side  of  his  nature,  was,  I  think,  she  whom  he  wronged  most 
deeply  —  I  refer,  of  course,  to  that  fair  Polish  enthusiast, 
Marie  Walewska.  The  fault  that  she  condoned,  it  is  not  for 
us  to  judge  harshly ;  but  Masson's  account  of  the  ruthless 
pressure,  the  campaign  of  insincere  promises  and  unscrupulous 
machinations  by  which  her  patriotism  was  turned  to  account 
against  her  chastity  and  religion,  must  always  be  painful 
reading  to  admirers  of  the  Corsican.  The  son  whom  she  bore 
to  him  in  1810  proved  worthy  of  his  exalted  parentage.  That 
she  became  in  some  degree  reconciled  to  her  strange  destiny, 
came  to  feel  at  least  a  genuine  affection  for  the  man  who  had 
rather  conquered  than  seduced  her,  is,  I  consider,  fairly  evident. 
She  awaited  the  summons  that  never  came,  in  an  anteroom 
at  Fontainebleau,  all  through  that  night  when  the  Emperor, 
after  abdicating,  had  attempted  suicide  by  poison.  She  visited 
him  with  her  son  in  Elba,  and  spent  an  idyllic  day  there  in 
the  Hermitage  of  La  Marciana.  She  hastened  to  Paris  in  1815 
to  welcome  him  on  his  escape  from  exile,  and  was  "  conspicuous 
among  those  women  whose  devotion  survived  his  happier 
fortunes,  and  who  gathered  round  him  at  the  Elysee  and  at 
Malmaison." 

It  was  shortly  before  the  birth  of  Marie  Walewska's  son 
that  Napoleon  at  last  resolved  upon  severing  the  tie  with 
Josephine  and  taking  a  princess  to  wife.  "  Anxious  to  save 
himself  and  Josephine  useless  emotion,  and  to  secure  himself 
against  further  hesitation  and  weakness,  he  sent  orders  from 
Schonbrunn  to  the  architect  at  Fontainebleau,  that  the  com- 
munication between  the  Empress's  apartments  and  his  own 
should  be  closed."  Finally,  "he  arranged  for  a  private  inter- 
view, in  which  he  announced  his  resolution  to  the  Empress." 


334  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Her  debts  were  paid,  her  title  was  secured  to  her  ;  a  town  and 
country  residence  and  a  hunting-box  were  placed  at  her  disposal ; 
she  was  granted  an  income  of  three  million  francs.  In  every 
possible  way  he  laboured  to  prove  that  in  putting  her  from  him 
he  was  coerced  by  public  motives  and  acting  in  violation  of 
his  personal  feelings.  "  My  destiny,"  he  had  told  her,  "  is 
superior  to  my  will ;  my  dearest  affections  must  give  way  to 
the  interests  of  France." 

Of  Marie  Louise,  Madame  Durand  says  :  "  No  woman  could 
have  suited  Napoleon  better.  Gentle,  peaceable,  a  stranger  to 
every  kind  of  intrigue,  .  .  .  she  soon  came  to  regard  Napoleon 
with  the  most  tender  affection."  She  was  a  mere  ignorant 
child,  of  whom,  by  the  way,  availing  himself  of  the  marriage  by 
proxy,  Napoleon  had  unceremoniously  possessed  himself  before 
the  final  ceremony,  on  the  very  night  of  their  arrival  at  Com- 
piegne.  Yet  she  had  somehow  the  knack  of  making  him  feel 
the  social  gulf  between  them.  Three  months  after  her  marriage, 
in  a  letter  to  Metternich,  she  says  :  "  I  am  not  afraid  of  Napo- 
leon, but  I  begin  to  think  he  is  afraid  of  me."  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  he  loved  her.  He  was  now  over  forty,  and  was 
entering  uponja  new  phase  of  sexual  development.  The 
conjugal  spirit  possessed  him  :  "his  first  care  was  to  prove 
himself  a  devoted  husband."  He  altered  all  his  habits  of  life, 
neglecting  even  the  most  urgent  military  necessities  in  order  to 
remain,  since  she  willed  it,  at  her  side.  When,  in  March  of  1811, 
she  was  confined,  the  greatest  danger  at  one  time  threatened 
both  mother  and  child.  It  seemed  that  Napoleon  must  choose 
between  the  sacrifice  of  all  his  ambitions  (by  the  loss  of  his 
prospective  heir)  and  the  death  of  his  bride.  Dubois,  the 
doctor,  pale  and  trembling,  came  to  the  Emperor  for  instruc- 
tions. "  Napoleon  came  nobly  out  of  the  hard  ordeal.  '  Do 
exactly  as  you  would  in  the  house  of  a  shopkeeper  in  the  Rue 
St.  Denis.  Be  careful  of  both  mother  and  child,  but  if  you 
cannot  save  both,  preserve  the  mother's  life.'  ' 

The  success  of  Napoleon  in  attaining  -what  is  vulgarly 
considered  the  ultimate  favour  of  so  many  women,  affords  a  fine 
text  for  those  who  would  expound  cynical  doctrines  with  regard 
to  feminine  virtue.  For  it  seems  clear  that  he  was  not  person- 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  335 

ally  attractive  to  women,  as  a  rule.  It  was  his  wealth,  the 
splendour  of  his  position,  the  eclat  of  his  fame,  which  made  him 
irresistible.  Of  these  advantages  he,  without  scruple,  availed 
himself,  here  as  elsewhere,  to  the  utmost,  for,  though  a  senti- 
mentalist of  the  school  of  Rousseau,  he  was  neither  chivalrous 
nor  romantic.  Of  the  fine  shades  of  gallantry,  the  nuances  of 
deference,  which  women  love,  to  which  not  merely  their  passions 
but  their  hearts  respond,  he  knew  and  cared  to  know  nothing. 
Love-making  as  a  pursuit,  the  subtleties  which  Henri  Beyle 
proposed  to  reduce  to  an  exact  science  (as  it  were  a  species  of 
experimental  psychology),  had  no  attraction  for  his  practical 
instinct,  which  desired  and  achieved — results. 

I  shall  not  add  much  to  what  has  been  said  by  me  already 
as  to  the  love-affairs  of  Dante.  According  to  his  own  account 
and  that  of  Boccaccio,  his  first  meeting  with  Beatrice  Portinari 
took  place  at  the  house  of  her  father,  on  the  occasion  of  a  May 
festival,  when  she  was  at  the  beginning  of  her  ninth  year,  and  he 
nearing  the  end  of  his.1  The  second  recorded  meeting,  when,  on 
his  encountering  her  dressed  in  pure  white,  between  two  older 
ladies,  Beatrice  turned  her  eyes  and  smiled  upon  the  poet,  is 
placed  nine  years  later.  "  The  mystic  number "  nine  was, 
however,  so  firmly  associated  in  Dante's  mind  with  the  destiny 
of  his  lady,  that  we  need  not  insist  on  the  historical  accuracy  of 
these  dates.  Nor  is  Boccaccio's  highly  coloured  account  of  the 
lovesick  brooding  of  Dante,  his  neglect  of  all  other  matters  from 
the  date  of  the  greeting  to  that  of  Beatrice's  death — from  his 
eighteenth  to  his  twenty-fifth  year — to  be  taken  au  pied  de  la 
lettre.  And  Isidore  del  Lungo  warns  us  against  implicit  reliance 
on  the  novelist's  assertion  that  Dante's  marriage  with  Gemma 
Donati  (which  almost  certainly  occurred  after  the  death  of 
Beatrice)  was  arranged  by  his  parents  with  a  view  to  "  drawing 
him  out  of  his  grief."  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  likely  that  the 
period  of  dissipation,  owned  to  by  Dante  in  his  interview  with 
Forese 2  and  elsewhere,  intervened  between  the  marriage  of 

1  Little  Beatrice  on  this  occasion  "  wore  a  robe  of  a  most  noble  colour  of 
crimson,  simple  and  seemly,  with  a  girdle  and  ornaments  suitable  to  her 
tender  age." 

2  Purgatorio,  xxiii. 


336  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Beatrice  and  his  own,  or  possibly  between  her  death  and  his 
marriage.  The  alliance  with  "  Gemma,  daughter  of  Manetto 
Donati,  blood  relation  to  the  famous  Messer  Corso,  the  great 
agitator  of  the  Guelph  party,  was,"  in  del  Lungo's  opinion, 
"  essentially  designed  to  cement  an  alliance  between  neighbours, 
using  that  term  in  the  sense  of  quasi  consorti."  In  short,  it  was  a 
mariage  de  convenance,  as  nine  out  of  ten  marriages  of  persons 
of  quality  were  in  the  Florence  of  those  days.1  Boccaccio 
flatly  accuses  Gemma,  by  whom  Dante  had  four  children,  of  a 
complete  lack  of  sympathy  with  Dante's  tastes  and  aspirations. 
We  know  that  after  1302,  when  he  left  Florence,  she  remained 
there,  and  that  they  never  met  again.  Certainly  that  looks  like 
estrangement ;  but  it  may  simply  mean  that  he  thought  it 
better  for  her  to  remain  where  she  had  good  friends  than  to 
share  his  homelessness  and  poverty.  Certainly  Gemma  does 
not  seem  to  have  taught  her  children  to  regard  their  father  as  a 
tyrant  or  a  deserter,  since  he  was  joined  at  Ravenna  by  his  two 
sons,  and  his  daughter,  named  (significantly  enough)  Beatrice. 
Would  a  mere  shrew  have  consented  that  one  of  her  girls  should 
be  named  after  the  avowed  object  of  her  husband's  first  and 
tenderest  devotion  ?  She,  no  doubt,  sensibly  regarded  the 
affaire  Beatrice  as  a  piece  of  literary  convention,  unworthy  the 
serious  jealousy  of  a  Florentine  matron.2  And  a  literary 
convention — however  seriously  taken  by  Dante  himself,  how- 
ever passionately  felt  in  those  poignant  years  of  his  boyhood 
and  adolescence — it,  no  doubt,  in  some  measure  was  or  became. 
What  more  artificial  than  the  rapture  and  anguish  of  the  Vita 
Nuova  ?  It  is,  after  all,  the  realism  of  the  Divine  Comedy 
that  has  made  it  and  its  author  immortal.  Because,  until  a 
poet  can  make  reality  the  vehicle  of  his  transcendent  visions, 
they  will  not  move  the  hearts  nor  grip  the  imaginations  of 
grown  men. 

It  was  not  only  in  the  years  of  early  manhood  that  what 

1  And  still  are,  by  all  accounts,  in  that  of  to-day. 

2  "  There  is  not  a  single  piece  of  evidence  to  prove  that  such  poetical  love- 
affairs  ever  unsheathed  a  sword  in  vengeance,  or  brought  about  civic  discords 
among  this  proud  and  hot-blooded  people"  (Women  of  Florence,  by  Isidore 
del  Lungo,  trans,  by  M.  G.  Steegman). 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  337 

he  himself  stigmatised  as  his  besetting  sin  of  lustfulness  led 
Dante  astray  from  his  own  ideal  of  constancy.  An  amorous 
episode  of  some  kind,  which  occurred  after  his  exile  at  Lucca, 
is  indicated  by  a  passage  in  the  twenty-fourth  canto  of  the 
"  Paradiso."  At  the  very  outset  of  his  pilgrimage  the  way  is 
barred  by  a  panther,  symbolising  sexual  passion.  Significant, 
also,  is  his  keen  sympathy  with  the  illicit  loves  of  Paolo  and 
Francesca,  concerning  which  he  writes  : — 

"  My  sense  reviving,  that  erewhile  had  drooped 
With  pity  for  the  kindred  shades,  whence  grief 
O'ercame  me  wholly.  ..." 

Respect  for  the  fact  compels  me,  therefore,  to  include  this  poet 
among  the  polygamists  ;  it  is  nevertheless  to  be  remembered 
that,  from  the  time  of  his  conversion  (somewhere  about  his 
fiftieth  year),1  Dante  repudiated  all  that  which,  in  his  own 
life  or  the  lives  of  others,  was  inconsistent  with  his  austere 
view  of  Christian  morality.  But  the  condemnation  of  a  ban- 
quet at  which  one  has  taken  one's  fill,  or  for  which  one  has 
no  taste,  is  a  form  of  virtue  more  gratifying  to  the  preacher 
than  convincing  to  the  (hungry)  congregation  ! 

The  central  fact  in  the  personal  career  of  Titian  is  his 
meeting  in  his  own  fiftieth  year  with  that  dissolute  wit  and 
bon  viveur,  Pietro  Aretino.  Three  years  later,  what  was  in 
all  probability  a  restraining  influence  was  withdrawn  by  the 
death  of  Titian's  wife,  Cecilia,  whom  he  outlived  by  forty-six 
years.  These  two  factors,  the  intimacy  with  Aretino  and  the 
death  of  Cecilia,  were  brought  to  bear  upon  Titian's  ardent 
and  sensuous  temperament  at  a  period  when  triumphant  success 
had  placed  at  his  disposal  all  that  the  opulence  of  fifteenth 
century  Venice  had  to  offer  of  luxury  and  the  means  to  self- 
indulgence  of  every  kind  and  degree.  Have  we  here  a  key 
to  the  discrepancy  between  the  conceptions  of  Womanhood 
(that  is,  of  sexual  morality)  respectively  revealed  in  the  early 
and  late  work  of  this  master  ? 

1  That  is,  soon  after  the  disappointment  of  all  his  political  hopes  by  the 
death  of  the  Emperor  Henry  vn.  (1313).     The  famous  visit  to  the  Convent  in 
the  Apennines  may  have  been  in  some  way  connected  with  a  spiritual  crisis, 
the  irrepressible  desire  for  inward  peace  and  harmony. 
22 


338  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

In  relation  to  this  matter,  Claude  Phillips  recognises  three 
main  phases  in  the  art  of  Titian.  In  the  imaginative  paintings 
of  his  youth  and  early  manhood,  particularly  in  those  wherein 
the  influence  of  Giorgione  is  evident,  as  in  the  so-called  "  Sacred 
and  Profane  Love,"  the  charm  of  sex  is  presented  frankly 
indeed  and  with  evident  delight,  yet  with  purity  and  restraint. 
His  nudes  of  this  early  period  are  free  from  the  emphasis  by 
which  a  sensualist's  brush  is  betrayed.  Something,  if  not  quite 
all,  of  the  subtle  brooding  charm  of  Giorgione  is  reflected  in 
the  sentiment ;  while,  in  technique,  that  artist  is  out-distanced 
from  the^  first.  In  his  "  Virgin  with  Cherries,"  Titian,  while 
retaining  "his  pristine  freshness  and  spontaneity,  shows  himself 
emancipated  from  the  mimetic  phase  ;  "  for  the  pensive  girl- 
Madonna  of  Giorgione  (and  the  allied  wistfulness  of  his  own 
Zingarella)  we  have  now  the  radiant  young  matron,  joyous 
yet  calm."  The  noontide  of  Titian's  genius,  considered  in 
this  one  aspect  still,  is  reached  in  his  "  Worship  of  Venus  " 
and  "  Bacchanal,"  painted  soon  after  his  visit  to  Alfonso  i. 
in  1516  (set.  39).  They  show  "  a  forward  step,  yet  not  without 
some  evaporation  of  the  subtle  Giorgionesque  perfume  exhaled 
by  the  flowers  of  genius  of  the  first  period." 

Then  in  his  fiftieth  year  begins  his  intimacy  with  Aretino, 
who,  with  himself  and  the  sculptor  Jacopo  Tutti,  formed  the 
so-called  "  Triumvirate."  Now,  "  under  the  influence  of 
Aretino,  Titian's  natural  eagerness  to  grasp  in  every  direction 
at  material  advantages  is  sharpened ;  he  becomes  at  once  more 
humble  and  more  pressing."  His  art  in  general,  and  in  parti- 
cular his  art  as  revealing  a  conception  of  Womanhood,  under- 
goes an  analogous  change.  "  The  second  period  is  one  of 
splendid  nudities  and  great  portraits."  Titian  is  now  the 
friend,  rather  than  the  mere  protege,  of  all  the  art-loving 
Grandissimi  of  North  Italy,  nay,  even  of  the  Emperor  himself. 
"  The  ease  and  splendour  of  the  life  at  Biri  Grande,  .  .  .  the 
Epicureanism  which  saturated  the  atmosphere,  .  .  .  operated 
to  colour  the  creations  which  mark  this  period  of  Titian's 
practice,  at  which  he  has  reached  the  apex  of  pictorial  achieve- 
ment, but  shows  himself  too  serene  in  sensuousness,  too  un- 
ruffled in  the  masterly  practice  of  his  profession,  to  give  to  the 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  339 

heart  the  absolute  satisfaction  that  he  gives  to  the  eyes."  In 
his  "  Magdalen "  (Pitti  Gallery)  "  there  is  latent  a  jarring 
note  of  unrefinement  in  the  presentment  of  exuberant  youth 
and  beauty,"  his  "  Venus  of  Urbino  "  is  "  an  avowed  act  of 
worship  by  the  artist  of  the  naked  human  body,  and,  as  such, 
in  its  noble  frankness,  free  from  all  offence."  Then  follow 
a  succession  of  Venuses  and  Danaes,  goddesses,  nymphs,  and 
heroines,  revealing,  one  and  all,  "  with  a  grand  candour  such 
as  almost  purges  it  of  offence  .  .  .  woman  .  .  .  reduced  to 
slavery,  .  .  .  woman  as  the  plaything  of  man."  Is  it  an  unfair 
inference  that  the  private  life  of  Titian  must  have  corresponded 
with  the  conception  of  the  role  of  Womanhood  thus  blazoned 
on  the  scroll  of  his  Art  ? 

The  Nemesis  that  attends  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  as  an  end 
is,  that  whereas  the  keenness  of  sensation  inevitably  wanes, 
the  thirst  for  it,  once  fairly  entertained,  not  only  becomes 
habitual,  but  is  gradully  transferred  from  the  physical  to  the 
emotional,  and  thence  to  the  spiritual  plane.  Pleasure,  truly 
so  called,  is  conditioned  by  appetite,  and  appetite  by  function. 
Only  by  the  spur  of  a  violent  stimulus  can  pleasure,  brief  and 
unsatisfying  at  best,  be  wrong  from  the  tardy  response  of  a 
semi-exhausted  function.  A  lustful  mind  in  an  impotent 
body  :  in  this,  the  logical  outcome  of  the  sensualist's  philo- 
sophy, we  have  a  spectacle  evoking  the  derisive  pity  of  gods 
and  men. 

Titian's  presentment  of  woman,  especially  of  nude  woman,  in 
his  late  works,  irresistibly  suggests  to  my  mind  the  suspicion  that 
he  did  not  escape  this  evil  fate.  From  frankness  he  descended 
to  coarseness,  from  coarseness  to  positive  vulgarity.  A  cynical 
note  is  also  sounded:  thus,  in  his  "  Danae  "  (Madrid)  "  a  grasping 
hag  holds  out  a  cloth  to  catch  her  share  of  the  golden  rain." 
His  "  Europa,"  finished  for  Philip  u.  (an.  set.  85),  is  "  a  strapping 
wench  who  with  limbs  outstretched  complacently  allows  herself 
to  be  carried  off  by  the  bull."  Lastly,  at  the  very  end  of 
Titian's  career,  we  are  startled  "  to  meet  with  a  work  which, 
expressed  in  this  masterly  late  technique  of  his,  vies  in  fresh- 
ness of  inspiration  with  the  finest  of  his  early  poesie.  This 
is  the  '  Nymph  and  Shepherd '  of  the  Imperial  Gallery  at 


340  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

Vienna  ....  Richness  and  brilliancy  of  colour  are  subord- 
inated ...  to  a  luminous  monotone.  ...  In  the  solemn 
twilight  which  descends  from  the  heavens,  just  faintly  flushed 
with  rose,  an  amorous  shepherd,  flower-crowned,  pipes  to  a 
nude  nymph,  who,  half-won  by  the  appealing  strain,  turns 
her  head  as  she  lies  luxuriously  extended  on  a  wild  beast's 
hide,  covering  the  grassy  knoll.  ...  It  may  not  be  concealed 
that  a  note  of  ardent  sensuousness  still  makes  itself  felt." 
Comparing  this  masterpiece  with  his  Giorgionesque  idyll  of 
nearly  seventy  years  back,  the  "  Three  Ages  "  of  Bridgewater 
House,  Claude  Phillips  continues  :  "  The  early  poesia  gives, 
wrapped  in  clear  even  daylight,  the  perfect  moment  of  trusting 
satisfied  love  ;  the  late  one,  with  less  purity,  but,  strange  to 
say,  with  a  higher  passion,  renders,  beautified  by  an  evening 
light  more  solemn  and  suggestive,  the  divine  ardours  fanned 
by  solitude  and  opportunity." 

Thus,  after  all,  in  the  hour  of  threatened  eclipse,1  genius 
re-asserts  its  prerogative,  and  transfigures  its  point  of  view. 

A  fact  of  great  psychological  significance  in  regard  to  the 
development  of  Titian's  art,  is  that,  from  the  same  period 
midway  in  his  long  career  of  nearly  a  century,  when  the  sensual 
element  begins  to  predominate  in  his  treatment  of  Woman, 
a  tragic  note  appears  in  his  religious  paintings,  deepening  into 
a  gloom  that  sometimes  almost  suggests  despair.  The  last 
work  of  his  brush,  that  sublime  "  Pieta  "  upon  whose  com- 
pletion he  was  engaged  when  stricken  down  by  the  pestilence, 
is  described  by  Claude  Phillips  as  "  produced  with  an  awe 
nearly  akin  to  terror." 

We  have  to  now  deal  briefly  with  an  exceedingly  complex, 
comprehensive,  but  somewhat  hackneyed  subject — the  numer- 
ous love-affairs  of  Goethe.  And  first  let  us  dispose  of  the 
popular  fallacy  that  gauges  the  strength  of  a  man's  passions 
by  the  number  of  his  mistresses  (Platonic  or  otherwise). 
Goethe  loved  many  women :  ergo,  Goethe  was  a  man 
of  strong  passions — that  is  the  tacit  but  completely  false 
assumption  underlying  the  majority  of  dissertations  made  in 

1  Always  understood  in  the  limited  sense  under  discussion,  for  in  many 
ways  Titian's  latest  art-period  waa  the  grandest  of  all. 


GOETHE. 

Engraved  by  K.  Cooper 


To  face  f>.  340. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  341 

defence  or  condemnation  of  the  poet's  peccadilloes.  The 
promiscuity  of  a  Charlemagne  is  as  intelligible  as  that  of  a 
bull,  or  any  splendid  specimen  of  exuberant  virility.  It  is 
not  here  a  question  of  sentimental  affinities,  but  of  a  function 
too  powerful  to  submit  to  conventional  restraints,  an  appetite 
too  robust  to  be  scrupulous  or  fastidious.  Passion,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  appetite  permeated  by  emotion ;  eroticism 
proper  is  largely  of  mental  or,  at  any  rate,  sentimental  origin, 
and  may  or  may  not  be  firmly  based  on  organic  sexual  impulse. 
In  aesthetic  temperaments  eroticism  often  seems  to  bear  an  inverse 
proportion  to  procreative  power  :  what  is  lacking  in  functional 
vigour  is  compensated  for  by  emotional  susceptibility.  Beeth- 
oven's is  probably  a  case  in  point ;  of  Goethe  I  would  not  say 
as  much — he  was  more  passionate,  but  he,  too,  was  extremely 
sentimental.  And  he  lived  in  a  sentimental  age,  whose  influ- 
ence upon  his  innate  proclivity  for  eroticism  is  by  no  means 
a  negligible  factor. 

Then,  too,  poets  are,  as  a  rule,  sexually  precocious ;  and, 
in  Goethe's  case,  this  precocity  may  well  have  been  stimulated 
by  his  introduction  in  his  tenth  year — consequently,  before  the 
age  of  normal  puberty — to  the  unwholesome  influence  •  of  a 
theatrical  environment.  Not  only  was  he  a  constant  attendant 
at  the  Court  Theatre,  where,  for  the  benefit  of  the  French 
troops  occupying  the  city,  a  series  of  plays  was  being  performed, 
but  he  obtained  access  to  the  green-room,  and  was  impressed 
by  the  nonchalance  with  which  the  actors  and  actresses  dressed 
and  undressed  before  one  another  and  before  him  and  his  boy 
friend.  Such  memories,  in  such  a  mind,  could  hardly  fail  to 
bear  fruit.  Four  years  later,  at  a  tavern  supper  party,  in  low 
company,  Goethe  met  Gretchen,  a  girl  some  years  older  than 
himself,  of  whom  he  says  :  "  Thenceforth  the  form  of  this  maiden 
haunted  me,  go  where  I  would."  He  saw  her  daily  for  some 
weeks,  but  the  liaison,  probably  innocent  enough  in  a  physical 
sense,  was  rudely  terminated  by  the  arrest  of  one  of  their 
associates  on  a  charge  of  fraud.  At  Leipsic,  a  couple  of  years 
later,  he  fancied  himself  in  love  with  Aennschen,  the  daughter 
of  the  house  where  he  and  Schlosser  lodged  together.  He, 
rather  unfairly,  sought  to  monopolise  her  affection  without  in 


342  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

any  way  pledging  himself,  and  when  after  two  or  three  years 
she  naturally  tired  of  so  impossible  a  situation,  he  found  relief 
in  dramatising  the  episode  (Die  Laune  des  Verliebteri). 
When  Goethe,  aged  twenty-one,  had  been  some  months  at 
Stiasburg  University,  he,  with  Weyland,  rode  out  to  Sesenheim 
and  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  Protestant  pastor,  one  of  whose 
three  daughters,  Frederica  Brion,  aged  nineteen,  slender,  fair- 
haired,  blue-eyed,  and  romantic,  made  an  instant  impression 
on  his  wayward  fancy.  On  a  second  visit,  in  Whitsuntide  of 
the  next  year,  "  she  appeared  more  charming  than  ever,  .  .  . 
and  when  the  opportunity  offered  of  heartily  kissing  one  whom 
I  loved  so  tenderly,  I  did  not  miss  it ;  still  less  did  I  deny 
myself  a  repetition  of  this  pleasure."  We  read  that  "  Frederica 
never  doubted  that  he  proposed  to  make  her  his  wife  ;  and  this 
also  was  assumed  by  her  family."  But  when  Goethe's  time 
came  to  leave  Strasburg,  he  returned  home  unpledged ;  and, 
in  the  eight  years  that  elapsed  before  he  saw  her  again,  the 
affair  died  a  natural  death.  Goethe  attributes  his  defection 
(without  seeking  to  justify  it)  to  his  instinctive  repugnance  to 
the  surrender  of  his  personal  freedom.  "  The  poet,"  says 
Wilhelm  Meister  "  must  live  wholly  for  himself."  But  genuine 
passion  accepts  even  the  most  onerous  conditions,  because 
"  needs  must  when  the  devil  drives."  Poverty  of  instinct,  the 
masquerading  of  mere  sentiment  in  the  robes  of  true  love  : 
that  is  the  physiological  and  therefore  the  true  solution  of  the 
problem.  Goethe's  fine  physique  has  misled  his  biographers, 
who  (idolaters,  for  the  most  part)  have  overlooked  the  fact 
that  reproductive  power  bears  no  essential  relation  to  stature. 
Goethe's  youth  and  early  manhood  were  interrupted  by  several 
severe  illnesses  ;  he  was  probably  never  so  strong  as  he  appeared 
to  be.  When,  finally  (set.  39),  he  did  enter  into  permanent 
relations  with  the  young  woman  whom  he  subsequently  married, 
his  attempt  at  paternity  can  only  be  described  as  a  failure. 

In  his  twenty-third  year  Goethe  was  the  hero(?)  of  another 
abortive  love-affair  ;  the  heroine  in  this  case  being  the  betrothed 
of  his  friend  Kestner.  Charlotte  was  no  doubt  attracted  by 
the  poet,  but  there  is  reason  to  surmise  that  she  was  not  really 
deceived  as  to  the  practical  import  of  his  attentions.  Goethe, 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  343 

for  his  part,  discreetly  fled  when  he  felt  that  the  matter  was 
growing  serious  ;  and,  in  The  Sorrows  of  Werther,  cleansed  his 
bosom  once  more  of  the  "  perilous  stufi  "  of  lovesick  yearnings 
for  the  unattainable. 

About  three  years  later  Goethe  became  engaged  to  Lili, 
a  sixteen-year-old  widow,  daughter  of  a  rich  Frankfurt  banker. 
She  was  a  self-possessed  young  woman,  accustomed  to  move  in 
somewhat  higher  society  than  the  poet,  at  this  phase  of  his 
development,  was  accustomed  to  frequent.  Consequently  "he 
felt  like  a  fish  out  of  water  in  the  circles  to  which  he  was  induced 
to  follow  her."  Lili  was  a  coquette  ;  Goethe  was  jealous ; 
the  parents  barely  tolerated  the  betrothal.  Inevitably,  where 
so  fickle  a  suitor  wa  sconcerned,  "his  interest  began  to  flag, 
and,  vowing  eternal  fidelity  all  the  while,  he  seized  the  occasion 
of  the  Stolbergs'  passing  through  Frankfurt  to  join  them  in  an 
expedition  to  Switzerland."  On  his  return  the  old  difficulties 
recurred  ;  and  Goethe  cut  the  knot  by  accepting  the  invitation 
of  Karl  August  to  settle  in  his  duchy  at  Weimar. 

I  shall  not  weary  the  reader  by  retailing  the  hackneyed 
details  of  Goethe's  platonic  wooing  of  Frau  von  Stein  (ter- 
minated by  his  liaison  with  the  woman  he  subsequently  married) ; 
of  his  more  serious  affair  (aet.  57)  with  Minnie  Herzlieb ;  or 
of  the  pleasant  material  he,  at  the  mature  age  of  seventy-three, 
afforded  to  the  gossips  of  Marienbad  by  his  infatuation  for 
Ulrica  von  Levezow.  Enough,  surely,  has  been  said  to  dispose 
of  the  romantic  myth,  constructed  by  imaginative  but  un- 
physiological  biographers,  in  which  the  great  poet  figures  as  a 
sort  of  Don  Juan.  To  say  it  with  due  reverence,  Goethe  was 
not  (like  Byron,  for  example)  a  man  of  passionate  and  funda- 
mentally amorous  temperament.  He  belonged  to  the  perhaps 
less  dangerous,  assuredly  less  dramatically  impressive- species  of 
— the  male  flirt.  The  bourgeois  element  in  his  disposition 
always  asserted  itself  in  time  to  save  him  from  crossing  the 
frontier  of  sentimental  comedy  and  invading  the  realm  of  true, 
self -oblivious  passion — that  is  to  say,  of  tragedy. 

The  sympathy  of  women  was  essential  to  him ;  their  em- 
braces he  certainly  coveted,  within  measure,  but  with  the 
reservation  that  the  price  exacted  must  not  include  the  sacrifice 


344  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  his  personal  independence.  Christiane  Vulpius,  the  inferior 
in  all  respects  of  Frederica,  captured  Goethe  in  the  only  way 
in  which  such  men  can  be  captured.  She  gave  herself  freely 
and  unreservedly  ;  and  trusted  to  the  logic  of  events  to  show 
that,  by  accepting  her  person,  he  had  made  himself  responsible 
for  her  future.  Her  confidence  (to  his  honour  be  it  said)  was 
not  misplaced  :  in  defiance  of  his  own  principles  he  at  length 
made  her  his  wife  ;  as  he  had  made  her  his  mistress  in  defiance 
of  those  of  his  friends. 

The  sexual  career  of  Mahomet  is  exceptional  in  this  respect, 
that  he  began  as  a  monogamist  and  ended  as  a  polygamist 
of  the  most  pronounced  type.  So  long  as  his  first  wife,  Cadijah, 
lived,  he  was  not  only  faithful  to  her  bed,  but  seems  to  have 
felt  no  inclination  to  the  indiscriminate  alliances  in  which, 
after  the  withdrawal  of  her  influence,  he  indulged.  This 
prolonged  continence  of  a  man  who  subsequently  developed 
amorous  proclivities  of  so  wide  a  range,  is  all  the  more  note- 
worthy in  that  Cadijah  was  his  elder  by  fifteen  years.  When 
he  married  her  he  was  twenty-five  and  she  forty.  When  she 
died  at  sixty,  he  was  therefore  forty-five,  a  somewhat  late 
age  for  the  initiation  of  habits  of  life  so  directly  opposed  to 
those  which  had  hitherto  sufficed  him.  One  can  only  surmise 
that,  preoccupied  by  the  incubation  of  his  ideal  of  religious 
reform,  he  had,  during  much  of  his  life  with  Cadijah,  no  interest 
to  spare  for  such  dalliance  as  would  have  resulted  in  an  increase 
of  his  worldly  cares  and  responsibilities.  Once  definitely 
committed  to  his  mission,  his  mind  would  be  comparatively 
free  ;  and  as,  with  growing  prestige,  he  rose  in  his  own  esteem 
he  availed  himself  more  and  more  fully  of  the  licence  conceded 
by  the  devotion  of  his  adherents.1  The  case  of  Charlemagne 
presents  obvious  resemblances ;  also  that  of  Napoleon,  up 
to  the  time  of  his  second  marriage.  The  greatness  of  Mahomet 
has  never  been  justly  recognised  by  English  opinion  :  conse- 
quently, while  on  the  subject  of  his  relations  to  women,  I  shall 
call  attention  to  one  highly  significant  result  of  his  reforming 
zeal.  In  the  dark  days  before  his  coming  it  was  customary 

1  His  followers  were  limited  by  Mahomet  to  four  wives,  but  for  himself  he 
claimed  exemption  from  any  such  restriction. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  345 

for  Arab  parents  to  bury  their  superfluous  daughters  alive. 
"  The  father  was  generally  himself  the  murderer.  *  Perfume 
and  adorn,'  he  would  say  to  the  mother,  '  your  daughter,  that  I 
may  convey  her  to  her  mothers.'  This  done,  he  led  her  to  a  pit 
dug  for  the  purpose,  bade  her  look  down  into  it,  and  then, 
as  he  stood  behind  her,  pushed  her  headlong  in  ;  then,  filling 
up  the  pit  himself,  levelled  it  with  the  rest  of  the  ground  ! 
It  is  said  that  the  only  occasion  on  which  a  certain  Ottoman 
ever  shed  a  tear  was  when  his  little  daughter,  whom  he  was 
burying  alive,  wiped  the  dust  of  the  grave  from  his  beard. 
This  was  one  of  the  many1  ghastly  and  inhuman  practices 
which  the  Prophet  denounced  absolutely  and  for  ever."  2 

Mahomet's  ethics  were  as  great  an  advance  upon  those 
current  before  his  day  as  his  pure  monotheism  was  upon  the 
inchoate  idolatry  which  had  hitherto  masqueraded  in  the 
guise  of  religion.  Every  approximation  to  a  logically  consistent 
theory  of  the  universe  (and  religions  are,  after  all,  only  popular 
philosophies)  necessarily  implies  a  higher,  because  more  en- 
lightened ethic. 

"A  love  child  himself,  there  is  no  record  that  he  ever  loved 
woman."  So,  in  a  fine  article  apropos  of  the  Note  Books  of 
Leonardo,  writes  Mr.  C.  Lewis  Hind.  I  myself,  by  a  fairly 
close  study  of  the  principal  literary  remains  of  the  artist,  have 
satisfied  myself  that  if  ever  there  lived  a  sexless  being  on  this 
earth,  one  devoid  not  merely  of  passion,  but  even  of  curiosity 
about  or  interest  in  the  wide  sphere  of  sexual  relations,  that 
being  was  he,  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Certainly  there  has  come 
down  to  us  but  a  mere  fraction  of  the  hundred  and  twenty 
volumes  of  which  he  claims  to  have  been  the  author.  But 
these  fragments,  comprising  the  results  of  his  keen  observation 
and  thought  de  omni  re  scihili  et  quibusdam  aliis,  may,  by 
reason  of  the  very  haphazardness  of  their  selection  by  Destiny, 
be  regarded  as  in  all  probability  representative.  In  them 
you  will  find  abundant  evidence  of  Leonardo's  extraordinary 
flair  for  prevision  of  the  results  of  inductive  science  upon  every 
other  conceivable  subject,  but  upon  this  particular  subject 

1  The  Italics  are  mine.— C.  J.  W. 

2  By  the  Waters  of  Carthage,  by  Norma  Lorrimer. 


346  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

only  one  meagre  paragraph,  and  that  one  suggestive  rather 
of  a  reminiscence  of  Plato's  philosophy  than  of  personal  ex- 
perience or  direct  observation.  "  The  lover  is  moved  by  the 
thing  beloved ;  they  are  united  as  the  sense  with  the  sensible, 
and  make  but  one  object.  Work  is  the  first  thing  which  is  born 
of  the  union.  If  the  thing  loved  is  vile,  the  lover  is  degraded. 
When  the  thing  united  is  in  conformity  with  its  uniter,  there 
ensues  delight,  pleasure,  and  contentment.  When  the  lover 
is  united  to  the  beloved,  he  is  at  rest."  l  Perhaps  I  should 
add  this  memorandum :  Ven&rem  observant  solam  hominibus 
convenire,  title  of  an  anatomical  plate  published  by  Uzielli.  How 
significant  a  reticence  on  the  part  of  one  whose  writings  comprise 
either  in  the  form  of  disconnected  musings,  or  of  what  appear 
to  be  rough  sketches  for  lectures  (possibly  delivered  at  the 
academy  founded  by  and  called  after  him,  at  Milan),  upon 
problems  of  anatomy,  physiology,  psychology,  theology,  the 
occult  sciences,  geology,  aesthetics,  astronomy,  mathematics, 
mechanics,  architecture,  hydro-dynamics,  optics,  aeronautics, 
no  one  of  which  he  so  far  failed  to  solve  that  his  anticipations 
have  not  been  confirmed,  wholly,  or  in  great  measure,  by  the 
conclusions  of  later  investigators  ! 

Yet  Leonardo  was  no  weakling,  but  a  superb  man,  of  princely 
bearing,  immense  bodily  strength,  and  remarkable  physical 
dexterity.  His  aristocratic  soul  delighted  in  fine  horses  and 
handsome  men — Salai  and  Melzi,  his  pupils,  and  the  devoted 
attendants  of  his  last  days,  are  both  commended  by  Vasari  for 
their  beauty.  The  question  naturally  arises — was  Leonardo 
like  so  many  men  of  genius,  a  man  of  homosexual  instinct  ? 
More  probably,  I  think,  the  dwarfing  of  life's  most  costly 
function  was  the  price  exacted  for  his  unprecendented  personal 
endowment.  For  it  is  not  entirely  true,  as  he  wrote,  that 
"  God  sells  us  all  good  things  at  the  price  of  labour  "  ;  some 
have  to  be  paid  for,  in  advance,  by  limitation. 

I  have  classed  Beethoven  among  the  celibates  because  he 
never  married,  and  his  life  seems  to  have  been,  in  the  physical 
sense,  chaste,  or  approximately  so.  But,  emotionally,  Beethoven 

1 "  II  codice  di  L.  d.  V.  nella  bibliotheca  del  principe  Trivulce  "  (Beltrami). 
Milan,  1893,  F.  6.  r.  (Textes  Choisis  de  L.  d.  V.  p.  67). 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  347 

was,  like  Goethe,  a  polygamist  from  first  to  last.  Too  fastidious 
to  find  satisfaction,  like  Turner,  in  gross  orgies,  lie  loved  many 
high-born  women,  and,  while  the  ardent  fire  lasted,  professed 
himself  eager  to  enter  the  marital  state.  But,  somehow,  it 
never  came  off ;  and  the  man  who  escapes  wedlock,  not  once 
but  many  times,  may  justly  be  regarded  as  a  bachelor  at  heart. 
Besides,  we  have  his  own  testimony  to  the  same  purport.  For 
himself,  he  said,  he  was  excessively  glad  that  not  one  of  the 
girls  had  become  his  wife  whom  he  had  passionately  loved  in 
former  days,  and  thought  at  the  time  it  would  be  the  highest 
joy  on  earth  to  possess.  He  told  Nannie  Giannastasio  that  he 
did  not  like  the  idea  of  any  indissoluble  bond  being  forced 
between  people  in  their  personal  relation  to  each  other.  .  .  .  He 
would  much  rather  that  a  woman  gave  him  her  love,  and  with 
her  love  the  highest  part  of  her  nature,  without  being  bound  to 
him.  He  knew  no  married  couple  who  did  not,  on  one  side  or 
the  other,  repent  the  step  he  or  she  took  in  marrying.  Beethoven, 
considered  as  an  embodiment  of  the  masculine  spirit,  was  never 
more  universal  in  his  music  than  in  this  unabashed  verbal 
confession  of  his  loathing  of  the  bond. 

In  their  dread  of  responsibility,  their  non-committal  attitude 
towards  life  in  general,  and  women  in  particular,  literary  men 
— I  include  composers — often  reveal  surprising  affinity  with  the 
type  of  the  mandarin  or  the  college  don.  Life  and  the  emotional 
expression  thereof  are  in  great  measure  antithetical  tendencies  : 
hence  these  men  of  sentiment  live,  as  it  were,  by  proxy,  and 
their  love  is  a  Barmecide  feast.  What,  ever  and  anon,  they 
needs  must  have,  yet,  as  they  divine  only  too  clearly,  no  one 
woman  can  permanently  give  them,  is  the  stimulus  of  a  new 
emotion — to  be  the  motif  of  a  symphony  or  a  song.  They 
cannot  give  themselves  unreservedly  ;  cannot  share  the  saving 
illusion  of  passion's  immortality.  Only  from  the  honeyed 
blossoms  of  Love's  garden  can  they  distil  their  nectar  :  his 
fruitage  is  not  for  their  lips.  As  husbands  and  fathers  they 
would  be  failures ;  for  the  sake  of  their  task  their  souls'  thirst 
must  remain  unquenched. 

Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  Beethoven  was  funda- 
mentally a  man  of  warm  affections ;  and,  from  tune  to  time, 


348  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  starved  heart  of  him  cried  out  against  the  solitude  of  his 
fate.  Possibly,  but  for  his  deafness,  he  would  have  bent  his 
proud  neck  to  the  yoke.1  When  he  was  about  forty-five  he 
became  the  guardian  of  his  little  nephew  Karl,  whose  father, 
dying,  had  entrusted  him  to  his  care.  The  mother  was  living, 
and  gave  Beethoven  an  infinity  of  vexation  by  trying,  by  legal 
and  illegal  means,  to  get  the  boy  back.  "  She  instigated  her 
nephew  to  lying,  deception,  and  dissimulation  of  every  kind 
towards  his  uncle."  Beethoven,  for  his  part,  took  the  responsi- 
bility very  seriously.  "  Do  I  watch  Karl,"  he  wrote  in  his 
Journal,  "  as  if  he  were  my  own  son  ?  Every  weakness,  every 
trifle  even,  tending  to  this  great  end  " — that  is,  to  make  a 
musician  of  him  ?  "  It  is  a  hard  matter  for  me.  But  He  above 
is  there."  All  his  fond  hopes  in  this  quarter,  too,  were  bitterly 
disappointed.  Karl  proved  a  mauvais  sujet,  whose  rake's 
progress  culminated  in  1826  (Beethoven's  fifty-sixth  and 
penultimate  year)  by  a  bungling  attempt  at  suicide.  "  I  have 
become  worse  because  my  uncle  insisted  upon  making  me  better," 
he  told  the  magistrate.  Ultimately  Karl  married,  and  became 
a  tolerable  citizen  ;  but  Beethoven  died  of  the  shame  and 
anguish  of  his  disillusionment,  which,  in  1826,  had  suddenly 
turned  him  into  an  old,  feeble,  and  broken-spirited  man. 

I  have  reserved  for  the  conclusion  of  this  chapter  the  remarks 
I  have  to  make  upon  that  first  and  largest  group  of  individuals 
who  adhered  to  the  monogamic  regime.  This  includes,  it 
will  be  remembered,  men  of  each  of  our  four  types,  men  of 
thought  being  most,  and  men  of  the  aesthetic  temperament 
least  largely  represented.  The  path  of  wedlock  is  the  path 
of  conformity,  of  use  and  wont,  of  good  citizenship  and  good 
repute.  The  inducements  it  offers  to  men  who,  not  being 
natural  celibates,  desire  to  devote  themselves  to  large  impersonal 
ends,  are  great  and  obvious.  Adding  no  crushing  weight  of 
responsibility  to  their  cares  and  labours,  it  nevertheless  con- 
tributes a  steadying  motive  to  life,  checks  caprice,  kindles 

1  In  Beethoven's  copy  of  the  Odyssey,  the  following  lines  are  marked  : — 

For  nothing  is  better  or  more  desirable  on  earth, 
Than  when  man  and  wife  united  in  hearty  love 
Calmly  rule  their  house. 


POWER  IN  THE  CRUCIBLE  349 

effort,  lulls  passion,  feeds  the  affections,  emancipates  the 
senses  and  the  mind.  Emancipates,  I  say,  because  he  who 
would  be  all  things  to  all  women  must  realise  in  the  end  that 
he  has  undertaken  an  impossible  task.  He,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  gives  rein  to  instinct  so  far  only  as  reason  can  follow, 
will  reap  the  reward  of  an  easy  conscience  and  a  settled  life. 
Byron  said  with  a  sneer  of  Hodgson,  that  he  was  "  inoculated 
with  the  disease  of  domestic  felicity."  Happy  is  he  who  can 
thus  obtain  immunity  from  the  ubiquitous  microbe  of  desire. 
And  in  truth  it  must  be  owned  that  the  sweetness  of  the  said 
felicity  is  not  so  unalloyed  by  bitterness  as  to  prove  cloying 
or  enervating.  Marriage  is  a  discipline.  "  It  is  so  far  from 
being  natural,"  said  the  wise  lexicographer,  "for  a  man  and 
woman  to  live  in  a  state  of  marriage,  that  we  find  all  the  motives 
which  they  have  for  remaining  in  that  connection,  and  the 
restraints  which  civilised  society  imposes  to  prevent  separ- 
ation, are  hardly  sufficient  to  keep  them  together."  But  this 
is  obviously  a  half-truth,  based  on  such  unwarrantable  assump- 
tions as  that  what  is  natural  for  one  man  or  woman  is  natural 
for  others ;  that  our  wayward  appetites  and  capricious  desires 
are  natural,  our  deep  affections  and  our  chivalry  unnatural 
(or  peradventure,  supernatural) ;  that  the  restraints  imposed 
by  civilised  society  are  the  predominant  factor  in  limiting 
sexual  promiscuity,  and  are  themselves  of  other  than  natural 
origin ;  and  so  forth.  Certainly  it  has  to  be  admitted  that 
men  whom  fortune  or  their  own  efforts  may  have  exalted  above 
the  restraints  in  question,  are  prone  to  evade  or  transgress 
them.  The  same  thing  has  often  been  observed  in  regard  to 
Europeans  living  among  uncivilised  people.  But  there  are 
many  exceptions  ;  the  day  of  sweeping  generalisations  in  regard 
to  this  most  complex  problem  of  sex-relations  has  passed  away, 
even  though  we  admit  that  the  day  of  its  final  solution  has  not 
yet  dawned. 

I  will  conclude  this  long  chapter  with  a  quotation  from 
George  Meredith,  which  puts,  neatly  enough,  the  case  for 
what  one  might  call  "  the  higher  monogamy  " — it  would  be 
certainly  too  dogmatic  to  call  it  "  the  monogamy  of  the  future  "  : 
"  Men  are  planted  in  the  bog  of  their  unclean  animal 


350  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

condition  until  they  do  proper  homage  to  the  animal  Nature 
makes  the  woman  be.  ...  When  the  embraced  woman 
breathes  respect  into  us,  she  wings  a  beast.  We  have  from  her 
the  poetry  of  the  tasted  life,  excelling  any  garden-gate  or 
threshold  lyrics  called  forth  by  purest  early  bloom.  .  .  .  Secret 
of  all  human  aspirations,  the  ripeness  of  the  creeds  is  there ; 
and  the  passion  of  the  woman  desired  has  no  poetry  equalling 
that  of  the  embraced,  respected  woman."  l 

1  The  Amazivtg  Marriage,  by  G.  Meredith. 


XII 
LIMITATION  AND  CRIMlH 

Definition  of  terms — Universality  of  crime — Examples — "  The  Guilt 
of  Innocency." 

"  All  the  men  who  are  worth  anything  must  begin  by  breaking  the  rules." — 
J.  C.  SNAITH. 

"  WHO  knows  what  one  will  find  half-way  when  he  sets  himself 
to  do  something  great  ?  "  To  this,  the  momentous  question 
self-proposed  by  the  hero  of  Stendhal's  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir, 
we  instinctively  rejoin,  "  Who  indeed  ?  "  But,  on  consulting 
the  records  of  their  lives  who  have  dared  the  experiment  in 
question,  we  find  evidence  which  may  tempt  us  to  be  more 
explicit.  He  will  find  a  temptation  adequate  to  the  greatness 
of  his  self-esteem  ;  will  undergo  an  ordeal  that  will  bring  to 
light  the  secret  motives  of  his  will.  As  to  Julien's  further 
inquiry  :  "  Must  the  man  who  wants  to  remove  ignorance 
and  crime  from  the  world  be  regarded  as  a  monster  and  an 
impostor  ?  " — that  is  easier  to  answer.  In  the  long  run  a  man 
will  be  regarded  as  precisely  what  he  is  or  was.  And  however 
far  astray  the  unconsidered  verdict  of  the  mass  of  his  contem- 
poraries, there  will  be  some  souls  who  discern  the  truth  from 
the  first. 

The  Great  Man  as  Criminal  being  our  topic  in  the  present 
chapter,  it  behoves  us  at  the  outset  to  forestall  the  danger 
of  any  misconception  of  our  terms.  Let  it  be  clearly  under- 
stood that  I  use  the  word  criminal,  not  in  its  legal,  but  in  its 
fundamental,  ethical  sense.  A  man  is,  in  this  sense,  a  criminal 
who  incurs  the  responsibility  for  an  act  which  reveals  indiffer- 
ence, or  less  than  a  normal  concern  for  obligations  considered 


352  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

binding  upon  all  mankind.1  We  are  all,  of  course,  criminals 
in  this  ultimate  sense  :  it  is  merely  a  question  of  degree.  Life 
compels  us  to  act :  and  action,  in  the  long  run,  implies  crime, 
since  crime,  philosophically  regarded,  is  the  necessary  corollary 
of  limitation.  To  act  is  to  commit  oneself  ;  and  self-committal 
is  identical  with  self-limitation.  It  may  be  objected  that  what 
constitutes  criminality  is  the  evil  intention  of  the  criminal. 
This  is  only  true  if  that  "  evil "  intention  be  referred,  not 
merely  to  the  particular  action  condemned  as  a  crime,  but  to  the 
general  attitute  of  the  criminal  towards  life.  Many  of  the 
greatest  crimes  are  committed,  not  because  of  any  sporadic 
impulse  towards  crime,  but  because,  when  the  temptation 
occurs,  the  agent  finds  himself  constrained  by  limitations  of 
motive  which  have  become  habitual,  supreme,  which  he  is 
therefore  powerless  to  transcend.  To  refrain  from  committing 
the  crime  would  be  to  give  the  lie  to  the  whole  of  his  past  life — 
its  hopes,  ambitions,  conquests — to  stultify  himself  and  all 
that  he  believes  himself  to  stand  for  before  the  world.  To 
accept  the  crime,  or  to  reject  himself — that  is,  the  hateful 
and,  often,  the  hated  alternative.  For  the  ostensible,  flagrant 
crime  differs  only,  or  mainly,  in  seeming,  from  the  uncensured 
acts  which  have  preceded  and  led  up  to  it.  In  carrying  it 
into  effect,  Destiny  and  the  agent  co-operate  in  pronouncing 
judgment  upon  the  hitherto  concealed  purport  of  that  agent's 
career.  "  All  my  life  I  have  known  that  I  might  have  to  do 
this.  It  is  too  late  now  to  turn  back  :  in  this  deed,  that  must 
be  done,  I  recognise — myself."  : 

I  repeat — we  are  all  criminals,  for  we  all  act,  or,  at  any  rate, 
resolve.  Even  the  resolve  to  abstain  from  action  is,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  a  kind  of  action,  fraught  with  its  own  grave  conse- 
quences, pregnant  with  its  own  Nemesis.  Individuality  not 
merely  implies,  but  is  limitation ;  and  limitation  is  imperfec- 
tion, in  other  words,  crime.  "  No,  sir,"  exclaimed  that  arch- 
realist,  Samuel  Johnson,  flatly  contradicting  some  facile  en- 

1  /  assume,  for  the  purpose  of  this  inquiry,  the  validity  of  these  obligations. 

2  "  The  best  and  worst  hours  of  life  are  in  themselves  irresponsible,  the 
will  hurled  headlong  forward  by  an  impulse  that  has  gathered  force  before  " 
(L.  Dougall,  hi  What  Necessity  Knows). 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  353 

thusiast — "  a  fallibk  being  toill  fail  somewhere."  Equally  to 
the  point  is  his  profound  observation  that  "  so  many  objections 
might  be  urged  to  everything,  that  nothing  could  overcome  them 
but  the  necessity  of  doing  something."  This  being  so,  it  would 
be  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  reveal  the  stigmata  of 
criminality  in  the  lives  of  every  one  of  our  forty  exemplars. 
Easy,  and  also  instructive,  but  wearisome  and — superfluous  ! 
In  the  case  of  our  artists  and  men  of  thought,  we  should,  more- 
over, be  covering  ground  already  in  some  degree  explored  in 
the  section  dealing  with  the  Natural  History  of  Purpose.  It 
is  in  what  concerns  the  negative  iconoclastic  aspect  of  their 
work  that  the  cloven  hoof  of  criminality  will,  for  such  men 
(not  for  them  alone,  either),  be  most  in  evidence.  But  crime, 
though  in  essence  universal,  is,  as  commonly  understood,  a 
department  of  action.  In  the  lives  of  men  of  action  we  shall 
find,  accordingly,  the  most  glaring  examples  of  criminality,  in 
commenting  upon  which  I  may  fairly  expect  to  be  spared  the 
gibes  of  idolatrous  hero-worshippers,  and  sentimentalists  in 
general.  Some  fine  specimens  of  criminality  are  also  to  be 
collected  among  the  doings  of  those  whom  I  have  described  as 
men  of  action  in  a  higher  sense — the  members  of  the  ethico- 
religious  group. 

There  can  be  no  question  but  that  Caesar  was  one  of  the  most 
humane  men  who  ever  achieved  supreme  distinction  in  the 
military  sphere.  In  all  that  concerned  himself,  personally, 
he  showed  himself,  over  and  over  again,  magnanimous  and 
superior  to  resentment ;  he  was  most  scrupulous  in  his  economy 
of  the  lives  of  his  men ;  and,  to  a  defeated  foe,  his  generosity 
was  unfailing.  His  conquest  of  Gaul  was  no  less  a  triumph  of 
enlightened  policy  than  of  martial  genius.  But  upon  Caesar's 
fair  fame  one  blot  persists  :  he  made  himself  responsible  for 
the  butchery  of  430,000  Germans  (the  figure  is  his  own),  of 
whom  probably  the  majority  were  helpless  women  and  children. 
It  was  not,  properly  speaking,  a  battle  :  the  immigrants  were 
totally  unprepared  for  an  attack ;  their  chiefs  were,  in  fact, 
in  Caesar's  camp,  whither  they  had  gone  to  apologise  for  an 
unprovoked  onslaught  upon  the  Roman  advance  guard.  They 
had  thus,  it  must  be  admitted,  placed  themselves  formally  in 
23 


354  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  wrong  ;  but  they  were  in  the  very  act  of  offering  reparation, 
when,  led  by  Caesar  in  person,  the  legionaries  flung  themselves 
upon  the  confused  host,  and  entered  upon  their  bloody  work. 
Even  Froude  admits  that  upon  this  occasion  the  rights  of  war 
were  "  ruthlessly  exceeded."  Cato  demanded  that  Csesar 
should  be  given  up  to  the  Germans.  They  "  were  not  indeed 
defending  their  own  country,"  agrees  Froude  ;  "  they  were  the 
invaders  of  another."  Yes,  but  the  "  invasion "  was  not 
voluntary,  but  enforced ;  they  had  been  driven  out  by  the 
stronger  Suevi ;  and  the  Belgians,  hoping  for  their  aid  against 
the  Romans,  had  welcomed  them  across  the  Rhine.  It  appears 
to  me  that  on  this  one  occasion  Caesar,  clearly  perceiving  that 
success  by  fair  means  was  out  of  the  question,  deliberately 
chose  to  succeed  by  foul  means.1  It  must,  nevertheless,  be 
remembered  that  his  conquest  of  Gaul  was  not  really  a  war  of 
aggression,  but  a  ^defensive  measure.  The  existence  of  his 
country  was  at  stake.  Also,  of  course,  his  own  future  ;  but 
Caesar,  though  by  no  means  disinterested,  was  always  ready  to 
submit  that  to  the  hazards  of  war. 

The  great  crime  which  history  records  against  Charlemagne 
was  of  an  even  more  repulsive  character,  because  it  had  not 
the  excuse  of  immediate  and  extreme  peril,  but  was  committed 
in  cold  blood  with  a  cynical  show  of  judicial  procedure.  It 
occurred  in  his  fortieth  year  (782),  during  the  second  Saxon 
war.  In  the  previous  year  Charles  had  issued  his  harsh  Saxon 
capitulary,  demanding,  under  severe  penalties,  the  submission 
to  baptism,  conformity  with  Catholic  religion,  and  the  payment 
of  tribute  to  the  Church.  The  recalcitrant  Saxons  not  long 
afterwards  fell,  at  Suntal,  on  a  body  of  Frankish  horse,  and 
almost  exterminated  them.  At  the  close  of  the  year  Charles 
appeared  at  Verdun  in  his  blackest  mood,  resolved  upon  venge- 
ance. Witikind,  the  leader  of  the  Saxon  revolt,  was  beyond  his 
reach,  and  the  lesser  chiefs  with  one  accord  laid  the  blame  on 
him  for  what  had  occurred.  Charles,  not  to  be  mollified, 
insisted  upon  the  production  of  victims.  Four  thousand  five 

1  Influenced,  too,  possibly,  by  the  resentment  of  his  men  for  the  unpro- 
voked attack  of  the  preceding  day.  If  so,  it  was,  however,  a  solitary  instance 
of  such  weakness  on  his  part. 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  355 

hundred  men  were  pointed  out  to  him  as  having  voted  in  the 
national  councils  for  rebellion.  "  They  were  at  once  seized, 
collected  at  Verdun,  and  massacred  in  cold  blood."  The 
result  was  as,  in  the  case  of  so  high-spirited  a  race,  might  have 
been  expected.  "  Fury  rather  than  terror  was  the  predominant 
feeling  among  those  who  had  escaped.  For  the  first  time  tribal 
distinctions  were  forgotten  ;  the  entire  people  rose  and  prepared 
to  meet  the  Franks  in  the  open  field.  The  next  three  years 
tested  all  the  strength  of  Charles."  The  massacre  had  been 
worse  than  a  crime  :  it  had  been  a  huge  blunder,  explicable 
only  as  due  to  the  exasperation  of  an  overwrought  mind.  But 
the  ultimate  source  of  such  moral  crudities  is  the  arrogance  of 
a  nature  too  narrow  to  understand,  much  more  to  tolerate,  an 
alien  point  of  view,  and  the  actions  thence  ensuing. 

The  career  of  Sir  Francis  Drake,  common  as  it  is  to  speak 
of  him  as  a  sort  of  privileged  pirate,  is  exceptionally  free  from 
the  taint  of  deliberate  criminality.  The  sturdy  little  man, 
for  all  his  Protestant  ferocity,  had  his  principles  of  warfare, 
and  consistently  "  played  the  game."  In  his  twenty-first 
year,  being  temporarily  under  a  cloud  with  Elizabeth,  he  joined 
Essex  in  Ireland  with  his  frigate  the  Falcon,  and  lent  a  hand 
in  the  storming  of  the  rebel  garrison  in  the  isle  of  Kathlin. 
Hither  the  Irish  and  Scots  malcontents  had  sent  their  women 
and  children,  and  the  diabolical  intention  of  the  attack  was  to 
massacre  them  all.  Drake  and  his  fellow-captains,  by  landing 
two  heavy  guns,  turned  the  scale  in  favour  of  the  assailants, 
and  must  share  the  responsibility  of  what  followed.  "  Two 
hundred  souls  were  massacred  as  they  left  the  castle,  and  then, 
day  after  day,  a  cruel  hunt  went  on  till  every  cave  and  hollow 
of  those  storm-beaten  cliffs  had  echoed  with  the  victims' 
shrieks,  and  not  a  soul — man,  woman,  or  child — could  be 
found  alive  in  St.  Columba's  Isle.  .  .  .  Drake  himself,  while 
the  massacre  went  on,  was  busy  with  the  frigates,  burning 
eleven  Scottish  galleys."  Some  squeamish  souls  may  regard 
as  a  crime  the  stern  reprisal  meted  out  to  the  false  friend  to 
whom  he  had  confided — only  to  be  shamelessly  betrayed  to 
the  hostile  Burleigh — the  j  dearest  wish  of  his  heart.  But, 
to  my  mind,  in  all  the  stirring  annals  of  Elizabethan  chivalry, 


356  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

there  is  no  more  heroic  page  than  that  which  tells  of  the  trial 
and  condemnation  of  Thomas  Doughty  "  at  that  first  Lynch- 
Court  amidst  the  desolation  of  Patagonia,"  and  of  the  execution 
of  its  just  decree  of  death  to  the  traitor.  "  On  an  island  over- 
against  the  [gallows]  of  Magellan,1  the  block  was  placed,  and 
beside  it  an  altar,  where,  side  by  side,  the  two  friends  knelt  to 
receive  the  Sacrament  together  in  token  of  forgiveness.  Hard 
by,  tables  were  spread  with  the  best  the  stores  provided,  and 
there  they  all  caroused  together  in  a  farewell  banquet  to  their 
comrade.  When  the  feast  was  ended,  with  courtly  jests 
Doughty  drew  near  the  block,  and  the  boon  companions 
gathered  round.  At  the  last,  as  one  who  had  lost  in  a  game  of 
hazard,  he  embraced  the  friend  who  had  won,  and  Drake  took 
payment  without  a  flinch.  He  showed  no  animus,  nor  did 
sentiment  sap  his  purpose  one  jot.  .  .  .So  the  sword  fell, 
and  when  the  provost-marshal  held  up  the  dripping  head,  Drake 
cried  out,  unmoved,  '  Lo  !  this  is  the  end  of  traitors  ! '  No 
crime  this,  but  the  just  and  necessary  retribution  of  an  out- 
rage on  faith  and  honour. 

The  principles  underlying  and  determining  the  public 
actions  of  Richelieu  were  such  as  were  bound,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  to  lead  him  into  situations  from  which  the  easiest  if 
not  the  only  path  to  safety  and  triumph  involved  the  responsi- 
bility for  crime.  In  the  choice  of  his  colleagues,  not  ability 
or  even  honesty,  but  unquestioning  subserviency  to  his  own 
will,  was  always  the  factor  taken  into  account.  The  King 
himself,  although  he  had  constantly  to  be  studied  and  con- 
ciliated with  at  least  the  semblance  of  deference,  was  by  adroit 
management  kept  in  line  with  the  policy  marked  out  by  his 
minister.  He  had  enough  wisdom  to  perceive  the  superiority 
and  indispensability  of  the  masterful  churchman  whom  he  had 
called  to  the  helm  of  State.  Richelieu  was  de  facto  King  of 
France,  and  pursued  the  unbending  line  of  his  policy  of  national 
aggrandisement  with  small  regard  to  the  moralities  of  any  but 
the  Machiavellian  code.  In  1626,  when  Richelieu,  aged  forty- 
one,  was  freshly  enjoying  the  triumph  over  the  Huguenots, 

1  At  the  foot  of  which  were  found  the  buried  bones  of  two  of  that  explorer's 
mutinous  officers. 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  357 

which  he  had  secured  by  the  help  of  England  and  Holland, 
their  natural  allies,  when,  too,  he  had  forced  Spain  to  resign 
the  control  of  the  Valtelline  pass,  his  growing  prestige  led  to  a 
combination  of  all  the  anti- monarchic  interests  of  France  in  a 
desperate   effort   at   his   destruction.     Gaston,    the   heir   pre- 
sumptive, was,  as  usual,  the  tool  of  the  conspirators,  who, 
through  the  Marshal  d'Ornano,  demanded  the  prince's  admission 
to  the  Council.     There  was  much  reckless  talk  on  the  part  of 
the  conspirators  :    rumour  had  it  that  they  intended  to  force 
the  King  into  a  monastery  and  set  Gaston  upon  the  throne. 
Meanwhile  Richelieu  coolly  bided  his  time ;   but  his  spies  were 
busily  collecting  evidence,  all  of  which  duly  reached  the  ears 
of  the  King.    When  the  time  was  ripe  for  action,  Richelieu 
struck,  and  struck  hard,  but  with  discrimination.     D'Ornano 
he  seized  and  imprisoned  ;    Gaston  he  at  once  cowed  and  con- 
ciliated by  the  granting  of  the  duchies  of  Chartres  and  Orleans  ; 
the  leaders — those  princes  and  nobles  whom  a  regard  for  justice 
rather  than  mere  expediency  would  have  brought  to  a  strict 
account — were  quite  leniently  dealt  with.     On  the  other  hand, 
a  scapegoat  was  chosen  in  the  person  of  Henri  de  Talleyrand, 
the  young  Count  of  Chalais,  who  had  been  betrayed  into  a 
formal  complicity  by  the  charms  of  the  duchess  of  Chevreuse. 
This  comparatively  innocent  man  was,  despite  the  frenzied  sup- 
plications of  his  mother,  condemned,  beheaded,  and  quartered. 
Six  years  later  this  hint  of  danger  to  the  opponents  of  Richelieu 
was  ruthlessly  confirmed  by  the  probably  illegal  execution  of 
Henri  de  Montmorenci,  the  most  powerful  noble  in  France.     In 
this  aSair,  also,  Gaston  was  even  more  deeply  involved,  but, 
as  usual,  submitted,  and,  as  usual,  too,  was  pardoned. 

Although  not  in  any  deep  sense  a  religious,  Richelieu  seems 
to  have  been  a  superstitious  man ;  and  by  this  weakness  he 
was  betrayed  into  a  crime  which  throws  a  sinister  light  upon 
his  intelligence  and  character.  A  certain  Grandier,  a  priest 
of  Loudun,  was  charged  with  causing  the  diabolical  obsession 
of  some  nuns  in  the  Ursuline  convent  there.  The  priests  called 
in  to  exorcise  the  demons,  reported  that  in  their  ravings  the 
nuns  named  Grandier  as  the  cause  of  their  visitation.  Richelieu 
allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  to  appoint  a  special  com- 


358  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

mission,  presided  over  by  Laubardemont,  a  spy  and  informer 
in  his  own  service,  to  try  the  case.  "  The  trial  itself  was, 
from  a  modern  point  of  view,  farcical,  the  bias  of  the  court 
was  unmistakable,  and  the  evidence  was  mainly  that  which 
the  exorcists  professed  to  have  extracted  from  the  so-called 
devils.  Grandier  was  sentenced  to  death,  tortured  to  make 
him  confess  his  accomplices,  and  finally  burned  under  circum- 
stances of  exceptional  and  wanton  barbarity."  Perhaps  the 
worst  feature  of  this  "  judicial  murder,"  from  the  point  of  view 
of  Richelieu's  responsibility,  is  that  Laubardemont  "  is  said 
to  have  prejudiced  him  against  the  accused  by  asserting  that 
Grandier  was  the  author  of  a  scurrilous  libel,  Le  Cordonnier 
de  Loudun,  that  had  been  circulated  when  Richelieu  was 
resident  in  Poitou  as  Bishop  of  LuQon."  At  any  rate,  it  is 
incontestable  that  "  he  allowed  the  machinery  of  a  special 
commission,  always  more  likely  to  look  for  guilt  than  innocence, 
to  be  employed  in  a  case  were  there  was  no  possible  justification 
for  its  use,"  and  to  be  presided  over  by  a  man  whom,  as  his 
own  tool  for  the  dirty  work  of  a  spy  and  informer,  he  must 
have  known  to  be  altogether  unsuitable. 

But,  after  all,  the  most  serious  blot  upon  the  fame  of 
Richelieu  results  from  a  crime,  not  of  commission,  but,  in  the 
main,  of  omission.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  his  "  almost  complete 
neglect  of  the  internal  well-being  of  France,"  and  in  particular 
his  failure  to  reform  the  crying  abuses  of  her  iniquitous  and 
rotten  financial  administration.  The  exemption  of  the  privi- 
leged classes  from  all  direct  taxation,  the  unequal  incidence 
of  the  indirect  taxes,  the  unspeakable  gdbelle  on  salt,  the  bare- 
faced sale  of  public  offices,  the  farming  of  taxes,  and  the  secrecy 
of  the  state  accounts,  were  evils  to  which  we  know  that  he 
was,  from  the  first,  fully  alive.  Not  only  did  he  practically 
nothing  to  remove  them,  but,  as  the  development  of  his  twofold 
aim — the  strengthening  of  the  monarchy,  and  the  exaltation 
of  the  national  prestige — gradually  increased  the  pressure  upon 
public  revenue,  so  he  grew  more  and  more  unscrupulous  in 
availing  himself  of  the  corrupt  methods  of  "  raising  the  wind," 
which  he  had  found  ready  to  hand.  "  The  opposition  of  the 
Parliaments,  of  the  provincial  estates,  and  of  armed  rebellion, 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  359 

as  in  the  case  of  the  famous  nus-pieds  in  Normandy,  was  ruth- 
lessly suppressed."  Who  shall  dare  estimate  the  sum  of 
misery  and  futile  resentment  on  which,  as  on  a  heap  of  bones 
and  corruption,  the  Moloch-temple  of  his  glory  was  based  ? 
And  here,  once  for  all,  it  may  be  all  too  clearly  discerned,  how 
our  crimes  are  predetermined  by  the  limitations  of  our  outlook 
and  aims.  Once  fairly  launched  upon  his  career  of  ambition, 
once  the  self-pledged  champion  of  monarchic  autocracy  and 
European  aggression,  Richelieu  found  himself  committed  to 
a  task  radically  inconsistent  with  any  whole-hearted  advocacy 
of  economic  reform. 

I  do  not  rank  as  a  crime  Cromwell's  responsibility  for  the 
execution  of  Charles  i.  That  responsibility  he  himself  not 
only  accepted  to  the  full,  but  justified  and  defended  to  his  dying 
day.  It — the  execution — was  to  him  "  a  sacred  duty  enjoined 
by  the  inward  voice  and  outward  signs  of  God  Himself."  The 
Commons  had,  immediately  before  the  trial,  declared  the 
People,  under  God,  the  source  of  all  just  power,  that  is,  of  all 
sovereignty.  What  the  People  had  given,  the  People  could 
also  take  away  :  the  trust  so  often  abused  might  be  cancelled 
and  annulled.  More,  the  King's  treachery  and  ill-faith 
deserved  punishment :  Cromwell  himself  had  risked  much  to 
befriend  him,  so  long,  that  is,  as  he  could  believe  him  only 
weak  ;  but  when  he  found  that,  all  the  while  he  had  been 
moving  heaven  and  earth  to  save  him,  Charles  had  been 
persistently  intriguing  against  him,  his  patience  finally  and 
irrevocably  gave  way.  "  I  tell  you,"  he  said  to  Algernon 
Sydney,  "  we  will  cut  off  his  head  with  the  crown  upon  it." 
And  history  has  endorsed  the  stern  decree. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  his  relations  with  Ireland,  Cromwell 
revealed  all  the  gloomiest,  harshest,  and  most  inhuman  elements 
of  his  typically  Puritan  outlook.  Into  the  foul  abyss  which 
Drake  had  merely  skirted — for,  after  all,  it  is  to  Essex  himself 
that  pertains  the  final  guilt  of  the  bloody  doings  on  St.  Columba's 
Isle — Cromwell  plunged  headlong  without  hesitation  or  scruple. 
To  Cromwell,  and  those  of  his  way  of  thinking,  Papacy  was  an 
abomination.  It  was  unthinkable  to  such  men  that  in  one  of 
the  three  realms  should  be  suffered  the  unrestricted  practice  of 


360  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

its  abhorred  rites.  Not  only  was  Ireland  a  Catholic  country  ; 
except  for  a  few  hard-pressed  garrisons  it  was  also  an  independ- 
ent and  hostile  nation.  Its  reconquest  was  to  all  Puritans  a 
binding  duty  :  Cromwell  undertook  the  task  as  a  sort  of  Crusade. 
At  the  storming  of  Drogheda,  Cromwell  "  in  the  heat  of  action  " 
forbade  his  men  to  give  quarter.  Within  that  and  the  next 
two  days,  the  whole  garrison  (3000  men)  were  slaughtered  in 
cold  blood.  Such  orders  would  not  have  been  given  had  Crom- 
well been  fighting  men  of  his  own  faith.  At  Wexford  the 
soldiers  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  and  massacred  the 
garrison  force  of  two  thousand,  and  "  not  a  few  citizens  "  beside. 
Seeing  that  Cromwell  spoke  of  this  unauthorised  butchery 
as  an  unexpected  providence,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  men 
had  good  reason  to  count  on  immunity  from  his  wrath.  In  all 
that  he  did  in  Ireland,  Cromwell  had  the  public  opinion  of 
England  at  his  back.  He  had  a  tremendous  reception  on  his 
return  to  London,  the  value  of  which,  judging  by  the  grim 
comment  he  made  at  the  time,  he  seems  pretty  accurately 
to  have  gauged.  As  he  passed  Tyburn  in  his  thronged  proces- 
sion, 31st  May  1650,  one  said  to  him,  "  See  what  a  multitude 
of  persons  come  to  attend  your  triumph."  He  answered  with 
a  smile,  and  very  unconcerned,  "  More  would  come  to  see  me 
hanged  !  " 

Concerning  Frederick  the  Great,  it  would  be  an  arguable 
position  that  he  was  a  man  of  essentially  criminal  bent,  modified, 
of  course,  by  human  impulses  and  gleams  of  enlightenment. 
One  of  the  first  acts  of  his  reign  was  the  sending  of  2000  soldiers 
to  levy  a  contribution  on  the  people  of  Herstal  and  Hermal, 
"  where  they  lived  without  control,  exercising  every  kind  of 
military  tyranny."  The  districts  had  for  over  a  hundred  years 
been  under  the  control  of  the  Prince-Bishop  of  Liege,  but  now 
Frederick  had  trumped  up  a  claim  to  them,  which  the  prelate 
was  forced,  by  the  complaints  of  the  victims  of  this  unprovoked 
invasion,  to  concede.  Ex  ungue  leonem  :  from  this  characteristic 
inauguration  of  his  reign,  the  Frederican  ethics  and  the  Frederican 
method  are  deducible  in  extenso.  One  can  imagine  the  unction 
with  which  Voltaire  delivered  himself  of  the  dry  suggestion, 
that  this  was  perhaps  not  an  opportune  moment  for  the  publica- 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  361 

tion  of  the  young  King's  Anti-Machiavel.  Apropos,  one  may 
surmise  that,  though  he  undertook  to  refute  them,  Frederick 
found  much  to  admire  and  no  little  to  emulate  in  the  precepts 
of  the  Italian  philosopher.  Their  influence  is  clearly  discernible 
in  the  conduct  of  his  policy ;  in  the  contrast  between  the  hypo- 
critical casuistry  of  his  public  manifestoes  and  the  cynical 
frankness  of  his  personal  avowal  of  self-interest  as  the  motive 
of  his  aggressions  ;  in  his  confidence  that  justifications  would 
be  found  by  the  literary  folk  for  all  such  aggressions,  provided 
only  that  they  proved  successful. 

It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  point  out  that  Frederick's 
claim  to  Silesia  was  actuated  by  no  other  motive  than  the 
impulse  to  self-aggrandisement.  We  have  his  own  explicit 
statement  to  the  effect  that  "  ambition,  interest,  and  a  desire 
to  make  the  world  speak  of  me,  vanquished  all,  and  war  was 
determined  on."  By  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  the  succession 
of  Maria  Theresa  to  this  and  her  other  dominions  had  been 
guaranteed  by  the  Powers.  Frederick  had  received  no  provoca- 
tion of  any  kind  or  degree,  when,  a  few  weeks  after  the  death 
of  the  Emperor,  he  entered  Silesia  with  30,000  men,  ostensibly 
"  to  cover  it  from  being  attacked,"  and  proceeded  to  levy 
contributions  from  the  inhabitants.  Meanwhile  at  Vienna 
his  ministers  were  advancing  his  claim  to  the  territory,  offering 
in  return  his  influence  on  behalf  of  her  husband's  election  to 
the  Empire,  and  a  loan,  both  of  which  were  naturally  refused. 
Another  good  example  of  Frederican  perfidy  was  his  repudiation 
in  1744  of  his  treaty  of  mutual  defence  with  England,  concluded 
only  two  years  before.  War  having  broken  out  between  this 
country  and  France,  Frederick  was  invited  by  our  ambassador 
to  furnish  troops,  but  declined  on  the  plea  of  doubt  whether 
the  English  had  not  been  the  aggressors.  Such  scruples  came 
with  an  ill  grace  from  a  man  of  his  record.  In  1756,  purposing 
to  invade  Bohemia,  Frederick  obtained  permission  from  the 
Elector  of  Saxony  to  march  through  that  state  on  condition 
of  the  enforcement  of  discipline  and  the  observance  of  due 
respect  towards  the  royalties.  But  no  sooner  had  he  reached 
Dresden  than  he  demanded  the  dispersal  of  the  Elector's  army, 
having  previously,  at  Leipsic,  ordered  the  payment  of  all  taxes 


362  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

and  customs  to  himself.  Not  only  did  Frederick  forcibly  take 
possession  of  the  secret  archives  stored  in  the  royal  palaces ;  he 
dismissed  all  the  Saxon  ministers,  appointed  a  Prussian  governor, 
blew  up  the  fortifications  of  Wirtemberg,  and  made  Torgau  the 
seat  of  his  usurped  government.  His  own  explanation  of  these 
highly  arbitrary  proceedings  was  that  "  he  was  well  informed 
that  the  Court  of  Saxony  intended  to  let  his  troops  pass  safely, 
and  afterwards  to  wait  events  in  order  to  avail  themselves  of 
them,  either  by  joining  his  enemies,  or  by  making  a  diversion 
in  his  dominions."  The  fact  remains  that  he  chose  to  enter 
Saxony  under  a  pledge  of  restraint,  which,  to  all  appearances, 
he  never  intended  to  observe,  or,  at  any  rate;  never  observed. 
That  Frederick's  proceedings  in  Saxony  aroused  the  resentment 
of  those  best  qualified  to  judge,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
forfeiture  of  all  his  rights,  privileges,  and  prerogatives  was  forth- 
with decreed  by  the  Aulic  Council  of  the  Empire,  only  one 
electorate  (Hanover),  of  the  nine,  siding  with  him. 

Of  the  methods  employed  by  Frederick  for  the  extortion  of 
money  from  the  ruined  citizens  of  Leipsic  (1758),  and  of  his 
justification  of  the  burning  of  the  suburbs  of  Dresden,  I  will 
say  nothing,  since  necessity  has  no  laws.  The  meanest  crime 
that  history  records  against  him  is,  after  all,  one  which  concerns 
a  single  individual,  the  famous  and  extraordinary  Baron  Trenck. 
This  former  friend  of  the  Bang  and  lover  of  his  sister  had  been 
confined  at  Glatz  as  a  traitor,  without  trial  or  court-martial. 
He  escaped,  but  was  captured  in  the  Austrian  service  in  1754. 
A  dark  cell,  measuring  ten  feet  by  eight,  was  constructed  under 
the  personal  direction  of  the  King,  who  also  prescribed  the  kind 
of  irons  to  be  worn.  In  this  hole,  handcuffed  to  the  extremities 
of  a  two-foot  bar,  with  a  tomb  engraved  "  Trenck  "  at  his  feet, 
this  unhappy  man  endured  nine  years  of  solitary  confinement. 
If  this  is  the  reward  of  a  King's  friendship,  what  wonder  that 
Voltaire  accepted  with  misgivings  the  repeated  invitations  to 
Potsdam !  Frederick's  championship  of  the  miller  Arnold,  and 
severe  punishment  of  the  Chancellor  and  eight  judges  concerned 
in  the  case,  was,  in  substance,  hardly  less  iniquitous  and  violent, 
although  here  he  may  be  given  the  credit  of  having,  in  the  first 
place,  interfered  in  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  interest  of 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  363 

justice — absurdly  and  culpably  mistaken  though  his  decision 
proved  to  have  been. 

Finally,  as  to  the  partition  of  Poland  :  in  political  matters, 
Emil  Reich  has  well  said,  all  nations  are  and  act  as  in  a  state 
of  nature.  Still,  there  is  a  certain  responsibility  attaching 
to  those  who  initiate  such  grave  events ;  and,  whatever  may  be 
said  for  it  on  the  score  of  expediency,  I  agree  with  the  biographer 
who  asserts  that  "  a  more  flagrant  act  of  injustice,  oppression,  and 
tyranny  has  seldom  appeared  in  the  history  of  mankind." 

Two  grave  crimes — one,  certainly,  by  no  means  well-estab- 
lished— are  alleged  against  Nelson,  both  (assuming  for  a 
moment  his  guilt  in  the  doubtful  case)  clearly  traceable  to  the 
sinister  influence  of  the  Neapolitan  Court  atmosphere,  and  of 
Lady  Hamilton,  its  presiding  genius,  upon  his  temperament 
and  character.  Nelson  returned  to  Italy  after  his  victory  of 
the  Nile  in  ill-health  and  low  spirits,  dissatisfied  with  his  Barony 
— for  he  felt  that  he  deserved  an  Earldom,  at  least — prostrated 
by  a  fever  which,  on  the  voyage,  had  nearly  ended  his  life, 
suffering  from  a  sense  of  thoracic  constriction  so  severe  that 
he  had  been  seriously  considering  the  question  of  retirement. 
The  state  of  affairs  in  Italy  was  not  likely  to  soothe  or  console 
him  :  on  the  one  hand,  he  was  disgusted  by  the  frivolity  of  the 
Court ;  on  the  other,  enraged  by  the  audacity  of  the  revolu- 
tionists. "  I  am  very  unwell,"  he  wrote,  "  and  their  miserable 
conduct  is  not  likely  to  cool  my  irritable  temper.  It  is  a  country 
of  fiddlers  and  poets,  whores  and  scoundrels."  In  a  letter 
to  Lady  Hamilton,  after  he  had  removed  her  and  the  royalties 
to  Sicily,  he  wrote,  in  the  same  vein  of  bitterness  and  dis- 
illusionment, "  I  am  now  perfectly  the  great  man — not  a 
creature  near  me.  From  my  heart  I  wish  myself  the  little 
man  again."  The  fact  is,  that  Lady  Hamilton,  ex-courtesan 
and  would-be  politician,  was,  like  all  beggars  on  horseback, 
inflamed  by  an  intolerant  contempt  for  those  whom  she  con- 
sidered her  inferiors.  Above  all,  she  was  a  fanatical  Royalist — 
death  to  all  Jacobins  !  We  aristocrats  cannot  breathe  the  same 
air  which  they  contaminate.  Such  a  woman's  influence  was 
exquisitely  adapted  to  the  aggravation  of  Nelson's  peculiar 
weakness  for  mistaking  sentiment  for  principle,  narrow  pre- 


364  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

judice  for  high-souled  chivalry  and  knightly  devotion.  So  it 
came  about  that  when  Caracciolo,  the  Commodore  of  the 
Republican  Navy,  fell  into  Nelson's  hands  (29th  June  1799), 
he  ordered  him  to  be  tried  forthwith  by  a  court-martial  of  Nea- 
politan officers.  Caracciolo  was  condemned  and  sentenced  at 
noon  of  the  same  day,  and  hanged  by  Nelson's  orders  at  5.0 
p.m.,  Lady  Hamilton  being  present !  This  precipitate  execution 
was  not  merely  indecent — it  was  virtually  an  act  of  deliberate 
and  furious  retaliation,  of  which  Nelson  in  his  best  period  would 
have  been  absolutely  incapable.  But  the  possibility  of  such 
errors  was  implicit  from  the  first  in  the  Nelsonic  point  of  view. 

A  few  days  before  this,  some  of  the  Neapolitan  revolution- 
aries who  had  been  besieged  in  the  castles  of  Uovo  and  Nuovo, 
had  agreed  to  surrender  on  receiving  from  Cardinal  RufEo  the 
promise  that  their  lives  and  property  should  be  spared.  Nelson, 
arriving  with  ships  and  men,  when  the  capitulation  was  on  the 
point  of  being  carried  out,  had  peremptorily  refused  to  endorse 
this  "  infamous  "  treaty,  and  would  accept  nothing  less  than 
unconditional  surrender.  It  is  alleged,  but  Mahan  denies  the 
allegation,  that  Nelson  allowed  the  garrisons  to  come  out 
before  they  had  been  informed  of  his  repudiation  of  the  treaty. 
Many  of  the  prisoners  were,  in  fact,  put  to  death.  I,  for  one, 
accept  Nelson's  clear  statement  to  Lord  Spencer  :  "  The  rebels 
came  out  with  this  knowledge  " — that  their  surrender  was  to  be 
unconditional.  It  is  just  possible,  however,  that  Nelson  did 
not  assure  himself  that  his  revocation  was  actually  communi- 
cated to  the  garrisons  ;  if  so,  we  may  be  pretty  certain  that  it 
was  not.  To  the  same  ill-starred  period  belongs  Nelson's 
"  flagrant "  disobedience  of  Lord  Keith's  orders  to  leave  Naples 
and  proceed  in  full  force  to  Minorca — a  matter  which  has, 
however,  been  sufficiently  dealt  with  in  an  earlier  chapter. 

If  Napoleon  cherished  any  illusion  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
task  he  had  undertaken,  and  the  fearful  responsibilities  in- 
volved in  his  world-shaking  ambition,  Destiny  was  not  slow  to 
remove  the  bandage  from  his  eyes.  In  his  thirtieth  year, 
finding  himself  de  trop  in  Paris,  where  the  prestige  of  his  Italian 
victories  had  made  him  persona  ingrata  to  the  Directory,  he 
betook  himself  to  the  Orient,  full  of  grandiose  visions  of  such 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  365 

an  Empire  as  should  dwarf  all  that  was  possible  in  "  the  mole- 
hill of  Europe."  In  the  March  of  1799,  Jaffa  was  carried  by 
assault  with  horrible  carnage,  but  4000  of  the  defenders 
offered  to  surrender  on  condition  that  their  lives  were  spared  ; 
and  their  offer  was  accepted  by  Beauharnais  and  Croisier, 
Bonaparte's  aides-de-camp.  "  I  was  walking  with  General 
Bonaparte  in  front  of  his  tent,"  writes  Bourrienne,  "  when  he 
saw  this  multitude  of  men  approaching,  and,  before  he  even 
saw  his  aides-de-camp,  he  turned  to  me  with  an  expression 
of  grief,  "  What  do  they  wish  me  to  do  with  these  men  ?  Have 
I  food  for  them — ships  to  convey  them  to  Egypt  or  France  ? 
Why  have  they  served  me  thus  ?  "  To  Eugene  and  Croisier 
Bonaparte  angrily  exclaimed  :  "It  was  your  duty  to  die  rather 
than  bring  these  unfortunate  creatures  to  me.  What  do  you 
want  me  to  do  with  them  ?  "  That  day  a  council  of  war  was 
held ;  but  no  decision  could  be  arrived  at.  When,  on  the 
following  day,  the  reports  of  generals  of  division  came  in, 
"  they  spoke  of  nothing  but  the  insufficiency  of  the  rations,  the 
complaints  of  the  soldiers — of  their  murmurs  and  discontent 
at  seeing  their  bread  given  to  enemies  who  had  been  with- 
drawn from  their  vengeance.  .  .  .  All  these  reports  were 
alarming,  and  especially  that  of  General  Bon,  in  which  case  no 
reserve  was  made.  He  spoke  of  nothing  less  than  the  fear  of  a 
revolt,  which  would  be  justified  by  the  serious  nature  of  the 
case."  Day  followed  day  without  any  decision  being  arrived 
at ;  the  murmurs  of  the  semi-mutinous  soldiers  grew  louder 
and  angrier ;  the  danger  of  starvation  stared  the  invaders  in 
the  face.  The  logic  of  events  proved  inexorable  :  on  the  sixth 
day  the  order  for  the  shooting  of  the  whole  4000  prisoners — 
prisoners  to  whom  the  promise  of  life  had  been  the  condition 
of  surrender — was  given  and  executed.  "  This  atrocious 
scene,"  writes  Bourrienne,  "  when  I  think  of  it,  still  makes 
me  shudder,  as  it  did  on  the  day  I  beheld  it.  ...  All  the  horrors 
imagination  can  conceive,  relative  to  that  day  of  blood,  would 
fall  short  of  the  reality.  .  .  .  It  was  necessary  to  be  on  the  spot 
in  order  to  understand  the  horrible  necessity  which  existed."  But 
what  necessity,  apart  from  the  promptings  of  one  man's  over- 
whelming ambition,  had  existed  for  a  French  invasion  of  Syrian 


366  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

territory  ?  Echo  answers,  What  ?  Napoleon  was  a  kind- 
hearted  man,  and  must  have  suffered  severely  in  this  affair  ;  but 
he  had  no  choice  but  to  go  through  with  it.  The  "  moral " 
appears  to  be  :  Let  no  man  undertake  to  conquer  the  world 
unless  he  have  a  strong  stomach  for  blood. 

During  Napoleon's  consulate,  in  the  years  1800  and  1801, 
two  attempts  were  made  upon  his  life — the  first  by  Caracchi, 
the  second  by  explosion  of  an  infernal  machine  by  some 
Royalist  conspirators.  He  attributed  both  plots  to  the  Jacobins, 
whom  he  always  hated  and  feared,  and  determined  that  France 
should  be  "  purged  of  these  ruffians."  A  special  commission 
of  eight  judges  conferred  upon  him  the  power  practically  to 
deal  at  his  own  sweet  will  with  political  offenders,  real  or 
imaginary.  A  consular  decree  shortly  afterwards  banished 
some  130  individuals,  including  many  whose  sole  crime  was 
that  they  were  lovers  of  liberty,  who  had  the  imprudence  to 
see  through  and  disapprove  of  his  ambition.  In  the  same 
spirit  Napoleon  severely  restricted  the  liberty  of  the  press. 
"  Should  I  give  them  (the  journals)  the  rein,"  he  said,  "  my  power 
would  not  continue  three  months." 

These  crimes  against  Liberty,  against  the  very  spirit  of  the 
Revolution,  which  had  provided  the  lever  by  which  he  was 
overwhelming  the  established  order  of  the  world,  are  by  no 
means  without  significance  to  the  psychologist.  But  they  are 
altogether  dwarfed  by  contrast  with  the  judicial  murder  which 
Napoleon  perpetrated  in  the  year  following  his  inauguration 
as  consul  for  life.  The  "  execution  "  of  the  Due  d'Enghien 
occurred  on  21st  May  1803,  at  Vincennes.  The  alleged  justifica- 
tion was  his  complicity  in  the  plot  of  Georges,  Pichegru,  Moreau, 
and  others  ;  but  the  trial  of  these  men  did  not  take  place  until 
nearly  a  month  later.  D'Enghien  was  therefore  shot  long 
before  the  trial  of  the  real  culprits  had  even  begun.  It  is  not 
seriously  believed  that  he  was  himself  concerned  in  the  plot, 
and  the  fact  that  he  remained  quietly  at  Essenheim  after  the 
arrests  had  begun,  is  clear  prima  facie  evidence  of  his  innocence. 
His  real  crime  was  that  of  having  Bourbon  blood  in  his  veins, 
and  his  murder  the  one  and  only  crime  of  pure  cowardice  which 
can  be  laid  to  Napoleon's  account. 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  367 

The  monstrous  Berlin  Decree  of  1806  against  British  com- 
merce, by  which  Napoleon  endeavoured  to  place  this  country 
"  in  Coventry,"  declaring  that  all  British  goods  would  be 
confiscated  and  all  British  subjects  seized  and  incarcerated, 
would  have  been  a  crime  if  it  had  not  been  a  stupendous  blunder. 
It  naturally  cut  both  ways,  and  was  inevitably  ignored  and 
evaded  wherever  and  whenever  possible ;  but  Napoleon's 
obstinate  endeavours  to  enforce  it  gravely  damaged  his  popu- 
larity and  prestige  in  Europe,  and  no  doubt  contributed  to 
his  fall.  As  a  means  of  injuring  us  it  was  perfectly  ridiculous, 
but,  as  Bourrienne  justly  remarks,  "  the  hurling  of  twenty  kings 
from  their  thrones  would  have  excited  less  hatred  than  this 
contempt  for  the  wants  of  a  people." 

The  cunning  with  which  Napoleon,  after  the  abdication 
of  Charles  iv.  of  Spain,  lured  Ferdinand  to  Bayonne,  and  there 
informed  his  guest  that  he  must  either  abdicate  or  die,  is  another 
pleasing  specimen  of  gutter  diplomacy.  From  a  gamin,  but 
hardly  from  an  Emperor,  are  such  tactics  to  be  expected.  This, 
however,  was  an  Emperor  who  also  cheated  at  cards  ! 

Bacon's  lapse  into  venality  is  attributed  by  Professor 
Nichol  to  his  "  almost  criminal  determination  to  succeed,  and 
increasing  veneration  for  those  who  were  ceasing  to  be  even 
worthy  of  respect."  One  fatal  error  was  his  officious  interven- 
tion against  the  marriage  of  Buckingham's  brother  to  Frances, 
the  daughter  of  his  own  fallen  enemy,  Coke.  His  protest  against 
the  alliance  with  a  "  disgraced  house  "  incensed  Buckingham, 
whereupon  Bacon  made  bad  worse  by  abjectly  counterfeiting 
a  zealous  promotion  of  the  match,  which  duly  came  off  in  1618 
(Bacon,  set.  57).  Buckingham  asserted  that  he  had  had  to 
kneel  to  the  King  to  prevent  him  from  degrading  the  Lord 
Keeper,  who  henceforth  became  his  thrall.  During  the  entire 
period  of  his  full  Chancellorship,  Bacon  received  a  flow  of  letters 
from  Buckingham  virtually  demanding  undue  consideration 
for  the  suitors  whom  he  favoured.  The  man  who  wrote  that 
"  judges  must  be  chaste  as  Caesar's  wife,  neither  to  be  nor  as 
much  as  suspected  in  the  least  degree  unjust,"  must  surely 
have  suffered  severely  from  the  consciousness  of  so  false  and 
humiliating  a  position.  The  issue  is  known  to  all  the  world  ; 


368  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

but  while  it  appears  to  be  certain  that  Bacon  received  and  even 
borrowed  money  from  suitors,  pendente  lite,  there  is,  Nichol 
asserts,  no  evidence  that  he  ever  allowed  his  verdict  to  be 
actually  affected  by  a  bribe.  "  Poverty  of  moral  feeling,"  to 
say  the  least  of  it,  is  also  indicated  by  the  active  part  played  by 
Bacon  in  the  prosecution  of  his  benefactor,  Essex ;  by  the 
malicious  exaggeration  characterising  his  declaration  concerning 
the  "  Treasons "  of  Raleigh  ;  and  by  the  base  ingratitude 
with  which  he  pressed  for  a  severe  sentence  against  Yelverton, 
charged  with  a  mere  irregularity,  although  a  couple  of  years 
before,  in  the  matter  of  the  Coke-Villiers  marriage,  Yelverton 
had  rendered  him  considerable  assistance.  It  is,  in  fact, 
strikingly  characteristic  of  Lord  Bacon  that  "  he  has  left  no 
great  defence  on  record — even  his  own  was  a  failure."  Coldness 
of  heart  seems  to  have  been  the  price  exacted  for  the  depth 
and  range  of  his  intellect,  and  rendered  him  the  willing  tool  of 
all  who  could  tempt  his  insatiable  appetite  for  wealth,  power, 
and  prestige. 

To  many  good  folk  at  the  present  day,  the  mutilation  of 
living  animals,  even  when  fully  ansesthetised,  for  the  purpose 
of  scientific  research,  is  a  thing  utterly  vile  and  reprehensible. 
Without  endorsing  or  even  discussing  this  position,  I  shall, 
in  the  interests  of  truth,  which  takes  precedence  of  all  theories, 
point  out  that  the  immortal  fame  of  William  Harvey  is  indis- 
putably and  confessedly  based  on  the  results  of  the  dissection 
of  innumerable  creatures,  fully  sentient  of  the  tortures  inflicted 
upon  them  ;  and  that  nowhere  in  his  surviving  works  is  any 
word  to  be  found  conveying  the  least  sense  of  the  gravity 
of  his  thus-incurred  responsibility  or  one  qualm  of  com- 
punction for  the  victims  of  his  consuming  zeal.  To  us,  to-day, 
this  callousness,  in  one,  moreover,  by  universal  testimony  of 
his  contemporaries,  known  as  in  other  respects  a  generous, 
warm-hearted  and  humane  man,  presents  a  psychological 
problem  of  no  little  interest  and  perplexity.  Much  may  no 
doubt  be  attributed  to  the  circumstances  of  his  time  ;  for  the 
sense  of  responsibility  in  such  matters  as  the  treatment  of 
animals  is  a  phenomenon  in  great  measure  unprecedented,  of 
sudden  and  recent  growth.  But  the  fact  must  be  faced  that 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  369 

genius  in  pursuit  of  its  proper  aim  has  generally  proved  ruthless, 
not  merely  to  its  possessor,  but  to  all  others  whose  interests 
obstructed  its  path.  But  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  have 
any  lurking  doubts  as  to  the  facts  of  this  case,  let  me  quote 
Harvey's  ipsissima  verba,  or  the  translation  thereof  :  l  "  When 
I  first  gave  my  mind  to  vivisections  as  a  means  of  discovering 
the  motions  and  uses  of  the  heart,  and  sought  to  discover 
these  from  actual  inspection,  and  not  from  the  writings  of 
others,  I  found,  etc.  etc.  ...  At  length,  and  by  using  greater 
and  daily  diligence,  having  frequent  recourse  to  vivisections, 
employing  a  variety  of  animals  for  the  purpose,2  ...  I  thought 
.  .  .  that  I  had  discovered  what  I  so  much  desired,  etc.  In 
the  first  place,  when  the  chest  of  a  living  animal  is  laid  open 
and  the  capsule  that  immediately  surrounds  the  heart  is  slit 
up  or  removed,  the  organ  is  seen  now  to  move,  now  to  be  at 
rest,  etc.  etc." 

Remember  that  the  lectures  of  Harvey  reveal  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  anatomy  of  more  than  sixty  different  animals  ; 
that  when  he  speaks  of  dissection,  what  is  now  often  called 
vivisection  is  commonly  implied ;  that  his  practice  of  such 
experiments  was  a  lifelong  passion.  The  sum  of  agony  in- 
flicted by  this  kind,  impulsive  little  gentleman,  especially  upon 
those  "  colder  animals  " — toads,  frogs,  serpents,  fishes,  crabs, 
etc. — in  which,  as  he  soon  found,  the  heart's  movements  could 
be  best  studied,  is  appalling  to  contemplate.  But  it  never 
seems  to  have  occurred  to  him,  nor,  as  far  as  I  know,  to  any  of 
his  most  bitter  adversaries  either,  that  the  flagging  hearts 
whose  movements  he  observed  and  described  with  such  admir- 
able precision,  had  any  sort  of  claim  upon  his  own. 

In  a  former  work  3  I  have  spoken  of  genius  as  "  the  Absolute 
of  human  accomplishment,"  assigning  to  it  the  supreme  place 
in  the  category  of  virtues.  In  every  work  or  deed  charac- 
erised  by  genius,  there  is  at  least  a  hint  of  finality  :  we  feel 
in  contemplating  such  works  or  deeds  a  unique  satisfaction, 

1  By  Robert  Willis. 

-  "  Multa  frequenter  et  varia  animalia  viva  introspicieudo."     The  second 
chapter  is  headed,  "  Ex  vivorum  disaectione,  qualis  fit  cordis  motus." 
8  The  Logic  of  Human  Character,  p.  215. 
24 


370  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

breathe  for  a  moment  the  pure  air  of  Infinity.  If  this  applies, 
as  it  certainly  does  apply,  to  the  achievements  of  practical, 
aesthetic,  and  intellectual  genius,  it  applies  in  a  still  higher 
and  fuller  degree  to  those  of  men  whose  creative  sphere  is  that 
of  the  innermost,  all-comprehensive  spirit,  the  sphere  of  Religion. 
Men  who,  like  Jesus,  are  destined  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  of 
world-wide  scope  and  aeonic  duration,  produce  on  the  minds 
of  their  associates  and  of  posterity  an  impression  of  correspond- 
ing depth  and  power.  So  vast  and  significant  is  the  ideal 
they  suggest,  which  in  their  lives  they  imperfectly  express  and 
embody,  that,  in  its  light,  their  personalities  become  trans- 
figured, and  assume  stupendous,  even  Divine  proportions. 
This  illusion — for  an  illusion  it  certainly  is — however  salutary 
in  its  first  effects,  must  not  blind  the  truth-seeker  (i.e.  the 
psychologist)  to  the  fact  that  such  men,  like  all  others,  have 
their  faults  and  limitations.  It  is  high  time  that  we  learned, 
once  for  all,  to  distinguish,  for  example,  between  the  man 
Jesus,  a  creative  genius,  but  a  fallible  man  for  all  that,  and 
the  Christ-Ideal,  whose  formulation  and  consecration  has  been 
the  collective  task  of  Humanity  during  at  least  the  past  two 
thousand  years,  probably  much  longer  than  that  if  the  whole 
truth  were  known.  "  It  is  hopeless,"  writes  K.  C.  Anderson,1 
to  attempt  to  understand  the  New  Testament  or  the  needs  of 
our  time,  so  long  as  we  continue  to  confound  Jesus  with  the 
Christ ; — the  first,  a  historic  figure  of  the  first  century  ;  the 
second,  a  reflection  of  this  historic  figure,  in  which  there  is 
always  of  necessity  a  subjective  element." 

Of  crime  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word  there  is,  of 
course,  no  suggestion  in  the  little  that  is  recorded  of  the  life 
of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels.  On  the  other  hand,  it  appears  fairly 
certain  that  he  died  a  criminal's  death,  and  although  heartily 
agreeing  with  the  universal  condemnation  of  the  iniquity 
which  brought  this  to  pass,  we  must  not  overlook  the  possibility 
of  some  formal  justification.  The  events  recorded  in  connection 
with  the  last  days  in  Jerusalem — in  particular  the  account 
given  of  the  purging  of  the  temple — suggest  something  like  a 
riot,  for  which  Jesus  was  no  doubt  held  responsible,  and,  indeed, 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  July  1906. 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  371 

in  a  sense,  may  have  been.  If  his  message  to  mankind  was, 
in  essence,  one  of  pure  goodwill,  it  certainly  involved  the  prob- 
ability of  contention.  "  I  came  to  cast  fire  upon  the  earth," 
he  said,  "  and  what  will  I  if  it  be  already  kindled  ?  "  His  re- 
pudiation of  the  Law,  of  Judiasm,  that  is,  contained  the  seeds 
of  inevitable  discord.  And  in  this  connection  it  is  interesting 
to  recall  the  remark  of  Wenininger  :  "  Judaism  was  the  peculiar 
original  sin  of  Christ.  .  .  .  Christ  was  the  greatest  man  because 
he  conquered  the  greatest  enemy."  If  Christianity  has  brought 
priceless  blessings  to  mankind,  it  has  also  brought  unspeakable 
woes.  If  its  founder  deserves  the  glory  and  gratitude  of  a  great 
benefactor,  can  we  logically  overlook  his  responsibility  for  the 
appalling  superstitions  and  errors  begotten  by  the  limitations 
of  his  point  of  view  and  by  his  dualistic  doctrine  ?  The 
Christian  ideal  of  self-sacrificing  love,  of  "  a  kingdom  not  of 
this  world,"  could  only  issue,  as  it  did,  in  a  fatal  severance  of 
Life  and  Religion.  Since  the  realisation  of  moral  aims  could 
only  be  wished,  not  willed,  men  despaired  of  the  world,  and 
sought  refuge  in  cloistered  asceticism.  In  Hegel's  phrase, 
Jesus,  by  his  repudiation  of  all  personal  and  finite  claims,  and 
withdrawal  from  secular  interests,  incurs  "  the  guilt  of  innocency, 
and  his  elevation  above  all  fate  brings  with  it  the  most  unhappy 
of  fates." 

To  a  man  like  Jesus  the  cold  and  barren  formalism  of  the 
Scribes  and  Pharisees  must  have  been  exasperating  in  a  high 
degree,  since  he  saw  in  it  the  very  antithesis  of  the  spiritual 
attitude  he  sought  to  make  prevail.  Yet  there  is  something 
to  be  said  for  the  formalist's  point  of  view.  The  past  is  justified 
in  defending  its  position  against  the  present,  so  long  as  the  latter 
fails  to  recognise  the  last  grain  of  truth  enshrined  in  its  forms 
and  institutions.  Can  any  impartial  witness  maintain  that  the 
invective  of  Jesus  is  always  the  expression  of  the  purest  and 
highest  enlightenment,  always  unalloyed  by  the  bitterness  of 
personal  rancour  and  resentment  ?  To  my  thinking — and 
perhaps  one  reader  in  ten  thousand  will  have  the  courage  to 
admit  the  truth  and  necessity  of  the  observation — there  can  be 
only  one  reply  to  this  question. 

For  behoof  of  dunces  and  heresy-mongers,  I  will  add — since 


372  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  title  of  this  chapter  may  otherwise  afford  pretext  for  malicious 
misrepresentations — that  I  am  very  far  from  regarding  the 
personality  of  Jesus  as  an  essentially  criminal  one.  I  merely 
point  out  the  irrationality  of  the  current  assumption  that  any 
individual  can  be  wholly  exempt  from  the  defects  of  his  qualities. 
The  more  exalted  the  qualities  of  a  given  individual,  the  more 
stringent,  though  not,  perhaps,  the  more  extensive,  will  be  the 
limitations  implied.  The  higher  we  climb,  the  farther,  no 
doubt,  our  vision  extends  ;  but — there  is  always  the  impassable 
horizon.1 

If  Marcus  Aurelius  could  have  foreseen  the  embarrassment 
of  his  admirers  when  confronted  by  the  damning  fact  of  his 
at  least  formal  responsbility  for  the  horrors  perpetrated  at  Lyons 
and  elsewhere  against  the  Christians,  is  it  conceivable  that  he 
would  have  suffered  so  foul  a  blot  to  mar  the  purity  of  his 
renown  ?  Certainly,  there  was  a  note  of  impatience,  a  hint 
of  intellectual  arrogance,  in  his  attitude  towards  the  new  religion, 
radically  inconsistent  even  with  the  highest  tenets  of  the  philo- 
sophy to  which,  upon  the  whole,  he  so  loyally  adhered.  His 
beloved  master,  Fronto,  was,  we  know,  also  prejudiced  upon 
this  point ;  and  it  may  be  suspected  that  Aurelius,  who  had 
Christians  among  his  servants,  for  whom,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
he  conceived  small  esteem,  was  unfortunate  in  his  experience 
of  professors  of  the  new  faith.  On  philosophic  grounds  he 
objected,  too,  not  without  plausibility,  to  their  enthusiastic 
other-worldliness,  their  courting  of  death.  A  man  should  be 
ready  for  death,  or  aught  else ;  but  to  seek  it  eagerly  was,  in 
his  opinion,  attributable  only  to  "  mere  perversity  "  and  the 
love  of  "  tragic  display."  Here  his  insight  certainly  failed  him — 
who  could,  in  cold  blood,  accuse  the  heroic  slave-girl,  Blandina, 
of  theatricality  ?  What  pose  could  survive  the  ordeal  of  the 
scourge,  the  arena,  the  burning  chair  ? 

But  although  in  his  reign  the  persecution  of  Christians 
reached  an  unprecedented  intensity,  the  responsibility  of  the 
Emperor  is,  upon  the  whole,  negative  rather  than  positive.  He 

1  "What  animal,  domestic  or  wild,  will  call  it  a  matter  of  no  moment  that 
scarce  a  word  of  sympathy  with  brutes  should  have  survived  from  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ?  "  (W.  James). 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  373 

conceived  it  necessary  to  uphold  the  national  religion ;  he 
therefore  permitted  the  punishment  of  those  who  repudiated 
that  religion.  But  he  took  no  steps  to  increase  the  severity  of 
the  anti-Christian  laws  :  Tertullian  even  claims  him  as  a  pro- 
tector. "  If,"  says  Tertullian,  "  he  did  not  openly  revoke  the 
edicts  against  our  brethren,  he  destroyed  their  effect  by  the 
severe  penalties  which  he  established  for  the  accusers."  It  is 
only  fair,  too,  to  remember  that  among  those  who  professed 
Christianity  in  those  days  were  the  followers  of  impostors  like 
Prodicus  and  Marcos,  who,  under  the  cloak  of  religion,  practised 
and  taught  the  most  shameless  debaucheries.  Upon  the  whole, 
though,  it  was  just  the  mere  "  goodness,"  the  invertebrate 
piety  of  the  Emperor,  that  betrayed  him.  He  lacked  negativity, 
and,  having  in  him  no  strong  egoism,  hence  no  passion  of  revolt 
or  innovation,  was  temperamentally  incapable  of  appreciating 
the  Dionysian  spirit.  A  revolutionist  of  any  kind  was  to  him 
a  mere  criminal,  and  a  fool  into  the  bargain.  Shall  we  call 
his,  too,  in  Hegel's  term,  a  somewhat  flagrant  case  of  the  "  guilt 
of  innocency  ?  " 

I  have  in  a  former  chapter  pointed  out  the  curious  analogy 
presented  by  the  careers  of  Marcus  Aurelius  on  the  one  hand, 
and  St.  Gregory  the  Great  on  the  other.  This  analogy  extends 
also  to  the  matter  under  consideration  ;  both  were,  by  tempera- 
ment, the  mildest  and  most  equable  of  men  ;  yet — both  were 
persecutors.  The  African  Church  was,  in  Gregory's  time, 
infected  by  the  heresy  of  Donatism,  according  to  which  the 
validity  of  the  Sacraments  is  conditioned  by  the  morality  or 
immorality  of  the  officiating  priest.  In  urging  the  Exarch 
to  suppress  this  heresy,  Gregory  used  expressions  hardly  to  be 
justified  even  from  the  point  of  view  of  his  epoch  and  office. 
He  was  to  "  bend  their  proud  necks  under  the  yoke  of  righteous- 
ness "  ;  and  one  can  well  imagine  what  harsh  measures  might 
result  from  such  counsel.  To  Pantaleon,  the  prefect,  he  also 
wrote,  sharply  reproving  his  negligence,  and  the  bishops  were 
commanded  to  "  unite  against  the  '  disease,'  so  that  a  future 
messenger  may  rejoice  our  heart  by  their  (the  heretics')  punish- 
ment." To  Dominic  of  Carthage,  Gregory  wrote  :  "  We  desire 
that  all  heretics  should  be  repressed  with  vigour  and  reason  by 


374  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  Catholic  priests."  And  the  desired  effect  seems  to  have 
been  duly  attained ;  after  596  there  is  no  further  mention  of 
Donatists  in  Africa. 

An  even  more  serious  matter  is  the  question  of  Gregory's 
relations  with  Phocas,  the  usurper  of  the  Empire,  and  murderer 
of  the  Emperor  Maurice,  the  Empress,  their  six  sons  and  three 
daughters,  and  the  Emperor's  brother.  To  this  vile  wretch 
Gregory  wrote,  congratulating  him  upon  his  accession  :  "  We 
rejoice  that  the  graciousness  of  your  piety  has  attained  the 
Imperial  dignity."  With  evident  reference  to  the  late  Emperor, 
who,  with  all  his  faults,  had  been  a  good  friend  to  Gregory  on 
several  occasions,  and  had  treated  him  with  respect  and  even 
affection,1  Gregory  also  wrote  as  follows  :  "  Sometimes  for  the 
punishment  of  the  sins  of  many,  some  one  is  raised  up  through 
whose  oppression  the  necks  of  subjects  are  driven  under  the 
yoke  of  tribulation ;  and  this  we  have  experienced  in  our  late 
affliction."  I  gladly  admit  that  there  is  reason  to  doubt  that 
Gregory,  at  the  time  of  writing,  was  aware  of  the  full  extent  of 
the  criminality  of  this  Phocas ;  but  I  contend  that,  in  that 
case,  his  congratulations  were  at  least  premature.  He  had  no 
grounds  for  assuming  that  Maurice  would  tamely  submit  to 
deposition  ;  and  should  have  held  his  peace  until  in  possession 
of  all  the  facts  of  the  case.  He  seems  to  have  realised  his  error ; 
for  it  is  stated  that  he  never  again  communicated  with  Phocas. 

In  general,  the  disposition  of  Mahomet  seems  to  have  been, 
for  an  Oriental,  surprisingly  tolerant  of  opposition,  and  free 
from  revengeful  rancour.  An  exception  must,  however,  be 
made  in  regard  to  his  treatment  of  the  Jews  ;  who,  for  their 
part,  it  must  be  owned,  were  far  from  careful  in  the  avoidance 
of  offence.  When  Mahomet  first  migrated  to  Medina  the  Jews 
for  a  time  seem  to  have  favoured  his  doctrine  ;  but  this  re- 
spectful attitude  was  of  very  brief  duration.  On  a  closer 
acquaintance  with  his  teaching,  they  repudiated  it  with  ridicule 
and  contempt.  Thus  he  was  brought  to  regard  the  race  as 
enemies  of  his  mission ;  and  the  seed  of  ill-will  sown  in  his 
heart  soon  produced  a  bitter  harvest.  On  occasion  of  a  riot 
following  the  forcible  unveiling  of  a  Moslem  girl,  Mahomet, 
1  And  had  made  him  godfather  to  his  son. 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  375 

now  supreme  in  Medina,  seized  the  opportunity  to  confiscate 
the  property  of  Jewish  citizens,  seven  hundred  of  whom  he 
banished  to  Syria.  Further,  he  revoked  the  decree  making 
Jerusalem  the  Kebla  (point  of  prayer),  and  substituted  Mecca, 
the  holy  city  of  his  own  race,  with  which  he  had  begun  to  feel  the 
necessity  of  uniting  the  destiny  of  his  mission.  So  far,  his 
hostility  to  the  Jews  had  not  betrayed  him  into  actual  crime ; 
but  worse  was  to  follow.  About  the  year  625  (Mahomet's 
56th  year),  the  third  from  the  date  of  his  arrival  in  Medina, 
a  Jewish  tribe,  the  Beni  Koraida,  who  occupied  a  stronghold 
near  the  city,  befriended  an  attack  upon  it  commanded  by 
Abu  Sofian.  The  attack  was  abandoned  by  the  Meccans ; 
and,  after  their  departure,  Mahomet  besieged  the  Koraidites, 
who  were  compelled  to  surrender  at  discretion.  Mahomet 
offered  these  Jewish  prisoners  the  submittal  of  their  fate  to  the 
decision  of  Saad  Ibn  Moad,  the  Awsite  chief,  a  man  formerly 
well-disposed  to  them.  The  offer  was  naturally  accepted  with 
alacrity ;  but,  as  Mahomet  knew,  and  the  Koraidites  did  not 
know,  Saad  had  been  severely  wounded  in  the  recent  battle ; 
and  his  goodwill  towards  the  tribe  had  given  way  to  a  hot 
desire  for  vengeance.  In  accordance  with  his  brutal  decree,  the 
seven  hundred  prisoners  of  war  were  taken  to  the  market-place, 
forced  to  enter  newly  dug  graves,  and  butchered.  Their 
women  and  children  were  enslaved.  Concerning  this  episode, 
Mahomet's  biographer  justly  remarks  that"  his  "  referring  the 
appeal  of  the  Beni  Koraida  to  one  whom  he  knew  to  be  bent 
on  their  destruction,  has  been  stigmatised  as  cruel  mockery  ; 
and  the  massacre  of  those  unfortunate  men  in  the  market- 
place of  Medina  is  pronounced  one  of  the  darkest  pages  in  his 
history."  By  far  the  darkest  known  to  the  present  writer ; 
although,  in  a  sense,  the  frequent  fabrication  of  "  special 
revelations  "  from  on  high,  authorising  this  or  the  other  caprice 
of  personal  indulgence,  must  be  accounted  an  even  graver  blot 
upon  his  name.  Much  may  be  forgiven  to  an  enthusiast ;  but 
here  Mahomet  lays  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  exploiting  the 
devotion  and  credulity  of  his  followers,  and  compromising  the 
purity  of  his  cause.  He  was  no  quack  ;  but  he  sometimes  con- 
descended to  the  methods  of  quackery  ;  and  adversaries  have 


376  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

not  been  slow  in  availing  themselves  of  the  opportunity  thus 
provided  of  impugning  his  genius  and  his  aim. 

With  regard  to  Luther,  the  last  of  our  great  men  with 
whom  I  have  to  deal  in  the  capacity  of  criminal,  I  have  already 
had  occasion  to  mention  his  endorsement  of  the  persecution 
of  Anabaptists — that  is,  of  persons  who,  like  himself,  recog- 
nising the  Scriptures,  as  interpreted  by  the  "  Christian  con- 
science," as  the  supreme  spiritual  authority,  were  perverse 
enough  to  differ  from  him  as  to  the  purport  of  such  inter- 
pretation. He  advised  the  adoption  by  his  Elector  of  a  decree 
to  the  effect  that  all  rebaptized  persons  should  be  executed 
without  trial.  After  this,  the  less  said  on  the  subject  of 
Luther's  religious  tolerance,  the  better  :  a  man  more  saturated 
with  the  arrogancy  of  the  odium  theologicum  his  own  century 
could  hardly  adduce.  But  what  is  generally  regarded  as  the 
most  vulnerable  point  in  his  record,  is  his  attitude  towards 
the  peasants  and  fanatics  in  their  insurrection  of  1525  ;  and,  in 
particular,  the  violent  manifesto,  in  which  he,  a  "  peasant " 
writing  of  peasants,  urged  his  "  dear  lords  "  (with  a  reserva- 
tion, certainly  in  favour  of  dupes  lured  into  revolt)  to  "  stab, 
crush,  strangle "  all  whom  they  could.  That  this  congenial 
counsel  was  faithfully  followed,  needs  no  saying  :  after  the 
defeat  of  Miinzer  and  his  eight  thousand  at  Frankenhausen, 
"  one  stronghold  of  the  rebellion  after  another  was  reduced, 
and  the  horrors  perpetrated  by  the  peasants  were  repaid  with 
fearful  vengeance  on  their  heads."  Nor  was  the  lesson  of 
the  revolt  taken  to  heart  by  the  conquerors  :  the  burden  of 
ecclesiastical,  feudal,  and  Imperial  oppression  was  rather  in- 
creased than  diminished  after  the  event.  For  all  this  Luther 
has  been  held  largely  accountable  ;  but  on  carefully  looking 
into  the  matter  I  confess  that  he  seems  to  have  acted  not  ill, 
according  to  his  lights.  If  he  censured  the  peasants  for  their 
violence,  he  admitted  the  existence  of  some,  at  least,  of  their 
grievances,  and  did  not  fail  to  urge  upon  the  authorities  the 
responsibility  of  setting  these  right.  He  showed,  too,  the 
full  courage  of  his  convictions  by  visiting  some  of  the  most 
disturbed  districts  in  person,  and  urging  the  return  of  the  mal- 
contents to  more  conciliatory  methods  of  seeking  redress. 


MARTIN    I.UTHKR. 
Jageniaii  iM.  ;  H.  Meyer,  Sculp. 


To  face  p.  376. 


LIMITATION  AND  CRIME  377 

It  was  only  when  his  efforts  to  allay  the  growing  tempest  had 
utterly  failed  ;  when  bloodshed  and  anarchy  were  everywhere 
lifting  their  hideous  heads,  that  he  broke  forth  into  harsh 
rebuke  and  threw  the  full  weight  of  his  influence  into  the  scale 
of  established  authority.  According  to  his  lights,  I  repeat, 
the  man  acted  not  ill.  But  his  lights  were  so  lamentably 
deficient.  His  theological  hair-splittings  seemed  so  infinitely 
more  important  than  those  Twelve  Articles  in  which,  with  all 
moderation,  the  peasants  had  set  forth  their  protest  against 
the  intolerable  exactions  and  pretensions  of  those  who  had  the 
ordering  of  their  lives.  To  all  this  Luther  merely  replied  that 
it  was  their  duty  to  be  submissive,  that  the  Gospel  had  nothing 
to  do  with  their  demands. 

"  The  religious  world,"  says  Karl  Marx,  "  is  only  the  reflec- 
tion of  the  real  world."  Every  economic  change  is  foreshadowed 
and  attended  by  a  corresponding  change  in  that  "  nebulous 
mist  which  envelops  and  veils  the  actuality  of  our  social  life," 
only  to  be  dispersed  when  that  life  "  can  show  the  labours  of 
an  association  of  free  men  working  intelligently,  and  masters 
of  their  own  proper  social  movements."  Luther's  complete 
failure  to  grasp  the  significance  of  the  peasant  rising,  complete 
lack  of  vital  sympathy  with  its  objects,  were  the  inevitable 
corollaries  of  the  fact  that  his  Reformation  signified  the  emerg- 
ence of  the  Burgher  interest  and  the  Burgher  point  of  view. 
The  day  of  the  peasant  was  not  ye  t. 

This  brings  to  a  close  my  examples  of  the  great  man  as 
criminal ;  a  part  of  my  subject  which  I  have  approached  with 
reluctance,  yet  which  obviously  could  not  be  shirked.  Let  no 
one  imagine  that  I  have  approached  it  in  a  censorious  or  carping 
spirit.  Who  am  I — who  is  any  one,  to  fling  stones  or  mud  at 
these  demigods  ?  My  aim  has  been  to  show  the  close,  perhaps 
even  essential,  relation  of  great  qualities  and  great  defects — a 
fact  often  hypocritically  or  cowardly  ignored  ;  yet  which  has 
to  be  confronted  by  every  psychologist  worthy  of  the  name,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  philosopher.  The  twentieth  century,  in 
its  revival  of  aristocracy,  its  wholesome  repudiation  of  the 
Jacobinical  heresy — its  cult  of  heroes — has  no  use  for  pedestals 
and  the  limelight.  No  actors  need  apply  !  Its  heroes  will  be 


MAKERS  OF  MAN 

such,  and  such  only,  as  can  brave  the  light  of  day,  whose  beauty 
needs  no  rouge-pot  or  carefully  adjusted  vestments ;  but  can 
go  forth  naked,  yet  unashamed. 

"The  dignity  of  nakedness 
Reveals  the  turpitude  of  dress." 


XIII 
INDIVIDUALITY:    ITS  NATURE  AND  POWER 

Mechanism  versus  psychism — Back  to  Leibnitz — Heredity — Eugenics — A 
parable — Soul  and  spirit — Fechner's  hypothesis — "  Immortality  " — The 
social  factor — Valedictory  survey. 

HAVING  faithfully  acquitted  ourselves  of  the  task  of  examining 
in  detail  the  main  facts  of  existence,  as  recorded  in  the  lives 
of  our  representative  characters,  it  only  remains  to  discuss, 
in  the  light  of  these  observations,  the  general  problem  of  In- 
dividuality itself.  I  shall  allow  myself  here  the  freedom 
of  speculation  which  I  consider  myself  to  have  fairly  earned  : 
the  times  are  fully  ripe  for  a  bolder  and  more  funda- 
mental treatment  of  such  root-problems  of  psychology, 
and,  indeed,  for  a  re-casting  of  those  purely  metaphorical 
conceptions  of  Reality,  which,  however  serviceable  in 
their  day,  have,  by  mere  use  and  wont,  acquired  a  too  long 
unquestioned  spurious  authority  as  absolute,  unassailable 
dogmas.  Our  vicious  habit  of  thinking  exclusively  in  terms  of 
the  atomic  theory  is  a  conspicuous  case  in  point.  This  was 
all  very  well  so  long  as  the  activities  of  science  were  in  the 
main  confined  to  the  inorganic  sphere  ;  so  long,  therefore,  as 
the  ultimate  problems  were  necessarily  conceived  in  terms  of  the 
inorganic.  But,  as  Mr.  Fournier  d'Albe  well  says, "  the  physicist, 
working  on  the  very  borderland  of  science,  .  .  .  has  almost 
developed  into  a  mystic.  He  has  shattered  the  atom,  and  is 
now  endeavouring  to  reduce  matter  to  some  unintelligible 
turbulance  in  an  inconceivable  ether.  He  is  on  a  fool's  errand. 
'  That  way  madness  lies.'  It  is  sheer  waste  of  time  to  look 
for  an  ultimate  particle,  or  for  a  continuous  fluid  of  certain 
density  or  elasticity.  We  can  never  arrive  at  anything  ultimate 


379 


380  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

by  making  our  unit  small.  There  will  always  be  something 
a  million  times  smaller,  infinitely  smaller.  .  .  .  Let  us  not 
bury  these  problems  out  of  sight  in  the  Infinitesimal. 
No  material  explanation  of  the  universe  will  ever  explain 
anything.  The  elementary  particle,  the  elementary  position 
or  motion,  will  be  the  greatest  of  all  puzzles.  Real  progress 
must  be  sought  for  in  quite  another  direction.  .  .  .  Not  micro- 
scopy, but  psychology,  mil  solve  the  '  Riddle  '  of  the  universe." 1 
My  point  could  not  be  better  put ;  the  last  sentence  might 
serve  as  the  text  of  the  present  chapter,  and,  indeed,  of  the 
present  volume.  Psychology  is  the  science  of  to-day :  in 
terms  of  psychology  we  must  formulate  the  philosophy  of 
to-morrow. 

The  conception  of  Reality  as  a  mechanically-impelled 
system  of  irreducible  atoms  or  material  particles,  is  only  one 
of  the  many  idola  theatri  which  obstruct  the  path  of  clear  and 
comprehensive  thinking.  Others  may  confront  us  anon, 
perhaps  ;  if  so,  we  shall  not  fear  to  relegate  them  to  the 
intellectual  rubbish-heap  where  they  already  belong. 

Hitherto  we  have  been  mainly  concerned  with  Individuality 
in  its  phenomenal  aspect,  and  as  a  mere  product :  the  question 
of  its  real  or  substantial  nature  has  necessarily  been  postponed. 
We  have  seen  how,  prior  to  the  manifestation  of  a  given  per- 
sonality, innumerable  psychic  tendencies,  embodied — though 
this  factor  may  be  left  out  of  account — in  corresponding  organic 
or  inorganic  forms,  have,  through  countless  ages,  converged 
and,  ultimately,  by  some  inexplicable  chemistry  or  affinity, 
blended  into  one.  Then,  as  it  were  by  some  divine  chance, 
has  emerged  the  world-moulding  power  of  a  Caesar  or  Charle- 
magne, the  genius  of  a  Titian  or  Beethoven,  the  insight  of  a 
Goethe,  the  profound  wisdom  of  a  Hegel,  the  sublime  spirituality 
of  a  Jesus — all  rooted  in  the  abysmal  penetralia  of  an  immemorial 
past,  yet  all  radiating  the  authentic  lustre  of  a  something  un- 
paralleled ;  predestined,  yet  new.  In  treating  of  heredity  we 
found,  over  and  over  again,  indications  in  the  characters  of 
their  parents  of  the  proclivities  of  great  men.  But  we  must 

1  Two  New  Worlds,  by  E.  E.  Fournier  d'Albe,  B.Sc.,  London,  1907,  pp. 
149-151. 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    381 

beware  of  the  too  hasty  assumption  that  because  the  father  of 
Mozart  was  a  Court  fiddler,  a  composer  of  uninspired  trifles, 
and  the  author  of  a  successful  manual,  the  mystery  of  his  son's 
creative  genius  is  explained.  Grant,  even,  what  is  far  from 
certain,  that  the  emotional  and  mental  capacities  compressed 
in  a  given  personality  are,  one  and  all,  according  to  the  Mendelian 
or  some  other  formula,  inherited,  through  the  parental  gametes, 
from  the  ancestral  stock — the  fact  that  they  have  thus  flowed 
down  from  antiquity  and  become  fused  into  the  indivisible 
flame  of  a  unique  personality,  is  not,  from  the  conventional 
point  of  view,  one  whit  less  miraculous  or  inexplicable.  When 
all  is  said,  the  parents  of  most  of  our  great  men  have  been,  if 
not  commonplace,  at  best  somewhat  mediocre  folk.  Between 
them  and  their  illustrious  offspring  there  is  ever  a  great  gulf 
fixed — the  gulf  that  divides  mere  social  worth  from  world- 
significance,  mere  versatility  or  talent  from  genius  or  initiative. 

"  The  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is  ; 
The  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away  !  " 

In  conceiving  Individuality,  according  to  the  crude  showing 
of  appearances,  as  a  haphazard  conglomerate  of  inherited 
qualities,  a  mere  product  or  sum,  we  are  setting  the  cart  before 
the  horse.  Consequently,  we  see  all  our  rivers  flowing  uphill — 
a  fact  the  more  surprising  since  their  only  visible  source  is  in 
the  subterranean  region  of  the  inorganic  world.  We  are  here 
on  the  track  of  another  idolon  theatri  :  the  pseudo-scientific 
superstition  that  causality  is  an  affair  of  mere  sequence  in  time, 
nay,  rather,  of  mere  apparent  sequence.  What  appears  last 
on  the  scene  cannot,  according  to  this  hypothesis,  be  the  cause 
of  events  which  have  preceded  its  appearance.  But  a  thing 
may  conceivably  exist  before  it  appears  upon  the  scene  :  a  ship, 
for  example,  does  not  emerge  from  nonentity  at  the  moment 
when  it  mounts  the  horizon.  And  if,  as  appears  not  unlikely, 
there  is  in  Individuality  a  something  over  and  above  the  multi- 
plicity of  psychic  potentialities  traceable  to  this,  that,  or  the 
other  ancestor  ;  a  something  too  fundamental  to  grasp,  too 
subtle  and  elusive  to  define  ;  a  clinching  and  unifying  some- 
thing ; — is  it  outrageous  to  surmise  that  herein  may  lie  the 


382  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

true  determinant  of  all  those  phenomena  which  have  paved 
the  way  for  its  ultimate  manifestation  (in  so  far  as  they  have 
done  merely  this),  and  also  the  explanation  of  that  universal 
"  tendency  to  individuation "  in  which  Spencer  found  the 
keynote  of  evolutionary  processes  ? 

The  fact  is  that  we  want  a  new  atomic  theory,  rather 
perhaps  the  revival  of  a  too  hastily  forgotten  old  one — a  psychic 
or  spiritual,  in  place  of  a  material,  atomism  ;  a  monadology. 
"  Back  to  Leibnitz  "  must  be  the  cry  of  all  who  grasp  the 
futility  of  nineteenth  century  attempts  at  cosmology.  That 
astute  champion  of  neglected  aspects  of  truth  clearly  foresaw 
and  forewarned  the  savants  of  his  day  that  their  exclusive 
devotion  to  the  investigation  of  "  efficient "  causes  would 
inevitably  land  them  in  the  bog  of  a  purblind  materialism. 
He  yielded  to  no  man  in  maintenance  of  the  necessity  of  the 
mechanical  hypothesis  and  of  mathematical  methods  as  instru- 
ments of  research.  But  he  pointed  out  that,  in  itself,  the 
mechanical  view  of  nature,  however  useful  and  fruitful  of 
results,  was  far  from  being  philosophically  adequate,  was,  in 
fact,  false — a  doctrine  of  mere  appearance,  not  of  things  as 
they  are.  Hence  he  wisely  urged  his  contemporaries,  while 
availing  themselves  to  the  full  of  the  practical  benefits  of  the 
Cartesian  and  Newtonian  methods,  to  bear  constantly  in  mind 
the  merely  provisional  validity  of  the  conceptions  handled,  and  to 
supplement  their  defects  by  a  philosophical  reconstruction  of 
the  products  of  research.  His  warning  remained  unheeded  : 
intoxicated  by  the  success  of  those  early  efforts  in  the  new 
field  of  methodical  induction,  the  contemporaries  and  successors 
of  Leibnitz  flung  to  the  winds  what  they  now  deemed  the 
barren  rubbish  of  an  outworn  scholasticism ;  and  gave  them- 
selves over  body  and  soul  to  naive  acceptance  of  a  crudely 
mechanical  empiricism.  In  the  dryasdust  "  philosophy "  of 
Spencer  we  have  the  monstrous  apotheosis  of  this  hypostat- 
isation  of  a  single  aspect  of  Reality,  also  the  fulfilment  of 
the  apprehensions  of  Leibnitz  as  to  its  inevitably  disastrous 
effects. 

But  the  hour  of  release  from  the  clanking  of  the  Spencerian 
machine-universe  is  at  hand ;  it  may  soon  become  incredible 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    383 

that  so  hideous  a  portent  could  ever  have  been  suffered  to 
offend  our  eyes  or  our  ears. 

Back  to  Leibnitz  is  our  way  of  escape  ;  for  Leibnitz  alone 
among  the  pioneers  of  the  scientific  renaissance,  while  eagerly 
welcoming  and  smoothing  the  path  of  the  new  method,  con- 
sistently upheld  the  banner  of  the  old  truths  flaunted  and 
contemned  by  his  fellows.  And  what  did  Leibnitz  teach  with 
reference  to  our  problem  of  Individuality  ?  That  it  was  an 
ephemeral  product  of  antecedent  physical  conditions  ;  a  spark 
struck  off  in  one  instant  from  the  anvil  of  Circumstance  ;  ex- 
tinguished, in  the  next,  by  the  rude  blast  of  mortality  ? 

On  the  contrary,  he  taught  that  no  living  creature  actually 
commences  in  Nature,  nor  by  natural  means  comes  to  an  end. 
"  Not  only  is  there  no  generation,  but  also  there  is  no  entire 
destruction  or  absolute  death."  That  which  we  call  generation 
is  development,  and  that  which  we  call  death  is  envelopment 
and  diminution.  The  Leibnitzian  atoms  are  entelechies,  the 
humblest  and  obscurest  of  which  are  inalienably  endowed 
with  ungauged  potentialities  of  expansion  and  manifestation. 
"  Every  substance  has  a  perfect  spontaneity  (which  becomes 
liberty  with  intelligent  substances).  Everything  which  hap- 
pens to  it  is  a  consequence  of  its  idea  or  its  being,  and  nothing 
determines  it  except  God."  Consequently,  although  things 
happen  in  such  a  way  as  to  generate  the  illusion  that  one  sub- 
stance affects  or  is  coerced  by  another,  this  is  not  really  so. 
Self-expression  or  manifestation  is  not  uniform,  but  fluctuates 
in  accordance  with  the  true  nature  (idea)  of  the  substance  or 
entelechy  concerned.  And  where  the  self -manifestation  of 
one  substance  diminishes,  while  that  of  another  correspond- 
ingly increases,  we  say  that  the  first  has  been  affected  by  the 
second ;  that  the  first  is  passive  in  relation  to  the  activity  of 
the  second.  But  the  diminution  of  activity  in  the  one  case 
and  the  augmentation  in  the  other  are  each  of  spontaneous 
and  intrinsic  origin  ;  each  being  a  revelation  of  some  attribute 
of  the  substance  or  individuality  concerned.  Hence  "  it 
appears  more  and  more  clear  that  although  the  particular 
phenomena  of  nature  can  be  explained  mathematically  or 
mechanically  by  those  who  understand  them,  yet,  nevertheless, 


384  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  general  principles  of  corporeal  nature  and  even  of  mechanics 
are  metaphysical  rather  than  geometric."  All  activity  and 
all  passivity,  on  the  part  of  a  given  subject,  are  self-derived 
and  self-determined. 

All  experience,  that  is  to  say,  is,  through  and  through,  of 
our  own  making ;  and  the  causal  activity  which  we  attribute 
to  its  factors,  conceived  as  elements  and  processes  of  the  so- 
called  external  world,  is  nothing  but  illusion.  The  self  that 
determines  our  experience  must  not,  of  course,  be  identified 
with  the  self  of  our  every-day  consciousness.  The  former  is 
the  real  or  noumenal,  the  latter  the  empirical,  ego.  The  relation 
of  the  noumenal  to  the  empirical  ego  is  that  of  a  stern  task- 
master to  an  often-times  reluctant  or  even  rebellious  subject. 
For  the  temporal  welfare,  the  happiness,  even  the  bare  con- 
tinued existence,  of  its  ephemeral  shadow,  the  dominant  entel- 
echy  reveals  no  sort  of  concern.  Itself  serenely  exalted  above 
all  terrestrial  vicissitudes,  it,  in  accordance  perhaps  with  some 
occult  logic  of  predetermined  manifestation,  evokes  within  the 
sphere  of  our  self-consciousness  now  the  experience  of  smooth 
prosperity,  now  of  anguish  or  despair.  All  that  for  which  we 
return  thanks  to  Destiny,  all  that  for  which  we  rage  against  the 
gods  and  curse  the  brazen  skies,  is  alike  of  its,  that  is,  funda- 
mentally, of  our  own,  contriving. 

For  the  unity  of  the  real  unseen  order  is  reflected  in  the 
phenomenal  order,  so  that  the  several  experiences  of  all  con- 
scious beings  are  mutually  harmonised  and  interrelated  in  a 
way  that  inevitably  generates  the  illusion  of  external  cause  and 
effect.  So  it  happens  that  the  findings  of  empirical  science, 
hypostasing  abstract  deductions  from  observed  sensory 
sequences  into  the  manifestations  of  imaginary  forces  (light, 
electricity,  and  so  forth),  are  duly  verified ;  and  that,  year  by 
year,  the  pseudo-philosophy  of  mechanical  causation  binds 
heavier  and  stronger  fetters  upon  the  hypnotised  spirit  of  man- 
kind. 

But  descending  from  this  exalted  region,  and  turning  from 
the  general  to  the  particular,  let  us  consider  how  our  theory 
bears  upon  the  question  of  inherited  character.  It  is  a  crucial 
point,  since  from  the  point  of  view  of  empirical  science,  Individ- 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    385 

uality  is  a  chance-product,  a  casual  agglomerate  of  innumerable 
convergent  factors,  traceable  ex  hypothesi  back  through  the 
parents,  grandparents,  and  great-grandparents,  thence  widening 
out  by  innumerable  diminishing  rootlets  through  all  civilisation, 
through  all  prehistoric  humanity,  through  all  our  mammalian 
and  sub -mammalian  ancestry,  even  into  the  inorganic  sphere. 
Can  this  view,  by  which,  at  first  sight,  every  vestige  of  spon- 
taneity, of  self -initiative,  is,  for  the  individual  organism,  ab- 
solutely debarred  and  precluded,  be  in  any  way  reconciled 
with  our  own.  If  the  latter  is  to  stand,  it  not  only  can 
but  must  be  so  reconcilable,  since  I  have  no  intention, 
even  had  I  the  wherewithal,  of  trying  to  invalidate  the 
facts  of  heredity  and  biological  descent.  All  that  I  need  is 
contained  in  my  challenge  of  the  conventional  interpretation 
of  those  facts,  the  too  hasty  assumption  that  there  can 
be  no  more  in  them  than  meets  the  eye  of  your  cocksure 
contemporary  physicist.  What  meets  his  (mental)  eye  is  an 
aeonic  panorama  of  convergent  processes,  verifiably  generalis- 
able  in  terms  of  certain  abstract  uniformities,  beginning  in 
the  inorganic  realm,  traversing  the  organic  and  human 
realms,  and,  at  the  predestined  hours,  culminating  in  a 
given  conception  and  birth — in  individuation.  The  qualities 
revealed  in  the  career  of  this  individual  will  be  not  merely 
similar,  but  the  very  same  qualities  as  those  which,  thus 
patiently,  and,  as  it  were,  subterraneously,  have  threaded  their 
way  through  myriads  of  ages  and  myriads  of  organisms,  to 
meet  and  blend  in,  and  re-issue  from,  this  point.  And,  analog- 
ously, the  effects  initiated  by  this  career  are  hypothetically 
traceable  throughout  futurity  to  the  last  day  of  time,  and 
throughout  space  to  beyond  the  Milky  Way.  It  is  therefore 
no  mere  figure  of  speech  to  say  of  such,  of  any  individuality, 
that,  even  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  contemporary  physicist 
with  his  dubious  logic  of  so-called  "  cause  and  effect,"  it  is  no 
ephemeral  manifestation  of  some  three-score-and-ten  years' 
duration,  but  a  genuine  sample  of  Eternity,  having  neither 
ascertainable  beginning  nor  any  conceivable  end.  Thus, 
even  in  its  phenomenal  aspect,  even  to  superficial  observation, 
Individuality  reveals  that  eternity  of  manifestation  and  uni- 
25 


386  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

versality  of  range  which,  in  its  real  or  noumenal  essence — 
that  is,  to  thought — it  has  never  lacked,  nor  can  ever  be  denied. 
And  here,  I  maintain,  here  in  its  unseen  source,  never  in  any 
confident  anticipation  of  observed  uniformities  of  succession, 
we  must  seek  for  the  inviolable  necessity  determining  all  that 
has  led  up  to  and  resulted  from  the  manifestation  of  the  given 
individuality.  In  so  far  as  they  have  done  this  and  this  alone ; 
in  so  far  as  they  have  conduced  to  irrelevant  results,  other 
causes  must  naturally  be  assigned.  So  I  suggest  that  Beethoven 
or  Napoleon  had  such  or  such  parents,  had  such  or  such  lineage, 
because  the  entelechies  manifested  under  these  names  deter- 
mined these  conditions  in  advance.  Whereas  the  empiricist 
position  is  that  Beethoven  and  Napoleon  were  born,  and  were 
born  such  as  we  know  them,  because  their  parentage  and 
lineage  were  such  as  they  were.  However  paradoxical  my 
position  may  appear  to-day,  I  am  confident  that  the  future  will 
confirm  it,  proving  that  nothing  truly  or  even  approximately 
individual  was  ever  generated  in  time,  or  ever,  in  time,  came 
to  an  end. 

Of  course  I  am  alive  to  the  fact  that  Individuality  as  met 
with  in  experience  falls  far  short  of  the  ideal  standard.  That 
only,  perhaps,  can  be  described  as  in  the  full  sense  individual 
which  is  also  in  the  full  sense  universal — which  is  entirely 
self-sufficing,  comprehensive,  harmonious,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  infinitely  varied  and  complex.1  What,  for  the  sake  of 
convenience,  we  call  individuals  are,  strictly,  mere  personalities, 
more  or  less  limited,  more  or  less  flawed  and  self-contradictory, 
consequently,  more  or  less  transient  and  unreal.  I  am  not 
contending  for  the  personal  immortality  of  every  Dick,  Tom, 
and  Harry ;  nor,  indeed,  of  even  the  most  exalted  souls.  I 
suggest  merely  that,  underlying  every  subjectivity,  there  is 
an  unknown  factor  of  whose  nature  that  subjectivity  is  a 
genuine,  however  incomplete,  manifestation ;  and  that  this 
unknown  factor,  whether  we  call  it  immortal  or  decline  to 
commit  ourselves  to  that  large  word,  should  be  conceived  as 
exempt  from  the  ordinary  limitations  of  time  and  of  space. 

1  Such,  at  least,  is  the  contention  of  the  Absolutist — e.g.  Mr,  Bradley.  But 
does  not  individuation  imply  exclusion  ? 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    387 

Further,  that  this  unknown  factor  be  regarded  as  a  source  of 
creative  spontaneity,  a  causal  determinant  of  all  phenomena 
in  any  way  contributory  to  the  development  of  that  personality 
which  constitutes  the  provisional  manifestation  of  its  own 
essence.  Man  is  from  this  point  of  view — not  necessarily  the 
ultimate  point  of  view,  but  as  far  in  that  direction  as  I  am  now 
concerned  to  proceed — in  a  sense,  his  own  creator  ;  and  as  much 
may  even  be  said  for  every  organism.  For  every  organism  is 
the  product  of  its  own  fundamental  spontaneity,  the  self- 
display  of  some  reality  rooted  in  the  unseen.  But  the  reality 
underlying  a  world-famous  personality  must  be  something  vastly 
more  significant  than  that  underlying  a  commonplace  career  ; 
while,  as  to  the  lowlier  organisms,  their  case  need  not  detain 
us  at  present.  I  will  just  say,  however,  that,  in  the  absence 
of  distinct  self-consciousness,  true  individuation  can  hardly 
be  considered  to  have  dawned.  With  mere  organisation  we 
have,  it  is  true,  transcended  the  dynamic,  but  have  barely  entered 
the  psychic  sphere. 

The  facts  that,  in  their  own  sphere  of  supersensuous  exist- 
ence, the  entelechies  of  all  phenomenal  beings  constitute  doubt- 
less a  system  unified  by  its  own  laws,  and  that  this  unity  is 
reflected  in  the  phenomenal  order,  constitute  the  real  explanation 
of  that  unbroken  sequence  of  cause  and  effect  which,  read 
backwards  by  Science,1  generates  the  illusion  that  the  highest 
realities  are  a  mere  composite  product  of  the  lowest.  This, 
however,  cannot  be  really  so  :  the  true  order  of  causality  is 
the  very  reverse  of  the  apparent  order ;  what  is  highest  in  the 
scale  of  being  takes  ontological  precedence  of  all  that  is  below 
it,  and  uses  that  as  a  mean  towards  the  revelation  of  its  own 
occult,  pre-existent  potentialities.  The  so-solid  seeming  frame- 
work of  the  universe,  in  comparison  with  the  substantial  essence 
of  Individuality,  is  but  a  phantasmal  shadow-show,  mere 
scenery  painted  on  the  vaporous  background  that  curtains  the 
abyss  of  nonentity. 

Returning  to  the  subject  of  heredity  as  a  factor  of  our  main 
problem,  I  should  like  to  illustrate  my  point  by  a  reference  to 

In  so  far,  at  least,  as  Science  ends  at  the  point  where  the  process  really 
begins. 


388  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

the  fashionable  topic  of  "  Eugenics."  Not  long  ago  I  read  an 
article  by  the  author  of  Esoteric  Buddhism,  in  which  contempt 
and  contumely  were  heaped  upon  those  who,  by  the  scientific 
regulation  of  parentage,  hope  not  only  to  prevent  the  birth  of 
the  "  unfit,"  but  even  to  raise  the  positive  standard  of  human 
capacity  and  intellect.  The  idea  that  in  procreation  and  birth 
no  higher  factor  is  concerned  than  the  congress  of  two  physical 
organisms  and  the  physiological  processes  thereby  set  afoot, 
was  eloquently  and  justly  held  up  to  ridicule.  Thereby,  in 
the  opinion  of  its  critic,  the  eugenic  movement  was  necessarily 
stultified  and  condemned.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred 
to  him  that,  in  popularising  the  ideal  of  parental  responsibility 
to  the  unborn,  the  promoters  of  this  movement,  themselves 
in  large  measure  unenlightened,  might  be  the  instruments  of 
powers  needing  just  such  services  as  a  mean  towards  the  mani- 
festation of  their  own  causality.  The  spontaneity  of  the  eugenists 
themselves  would  in  no  way  be  compromised  by  the  admission 
that,  in  acting  as  seemed  good  to  themselves,  they  blindly 
subserved  higher  ends.  For  it  is  the  paradoxical  nature  of 
Spirit,  that  its  constituent  factors,  in  acting  spontaneously  for 
themselves,  invariably  act  as  the  needs  of  the  whole  demand. 
Assume  now  that  entelechies,  of  a  higher  ontological  grade  than 
any  of  which  we  have  recent  experience,  are  preparing  to  mani- 
fest themselves  on  the  terrestrial  plane.  Would  not  our  present 
haphazard  method  of  parentage  present  an  absolute  bar  to  the 
manifestation  in  question  ?  Would  not,  therefore,  some  such 
movement  as  our  eugenic  enthusiasts  are  ingeminating  be  the 
indispensable  preliminary  to  this  much-to-be-desired  consum- 
mation ? 

Viewed  from  below,  that  is,  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
phenomenal  order,  the  noumenal  essence  of  a  given  personality 
is  a  logically  evolving  potentiality,  tending  towards,  but  never 
attaining,  complete  unity  of  manifestation.  But  on  its  own 
plane,  that  is,  as  viewed  by  the  intellectual  insight  which 
pierces  the  illusive  aspect  of  things,  it  is,  from  the  first,  fully 
actual,  moving,  self-poised,  in  a  system  of  like  realities.  And 
as  to  its  nature,  this  much  can  be  said,  that  each  individual 
monad  comprises  two  opposed  tendencies,  or  polarities,  a 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    389 

tendency  towards  unity,  or  individuation,  and  a  cosmic, 
diffusive  tendency — a  specific  universality.  Specific,  I  say, 
because  absolute  universality  can  be  ascribed  not  to  any  par- 
ticular monad,  but  only  to  the  "  Absolute  Individuality." 
The  ceaseless  contention,  the  strenuously  balanced  interplay 
of  these  conflicting  polarities,  are  what  constitute  the  being  of 
every  monad.  In  the  phenomenal  order  they  are  necessarily 
manifested  in  succession  :  first  individuation,  then  expansion  ; 
but,  in  reality,  they  are  co-ordinate  and  simultaneous. 

Let  me  illustrate  these  points  by  a  parable,  which  the 
judicious  will  have  ears  to  hear,  and  the  foolish  are  at  liberty 
to  deride.  Reclining  at  ease  in  the  Elysian  fields,  a  Spirit 
gazes  into  the  depths  of  an  exquisitely  tinted  crystalline  sphere, 
which  it  idly  turns  in  its  hands.  This  crystalline  sphere  is 
the  universe  ;  for  time  and  space  are  but  our  ways  of  thinking  ; 
duration  and  magnitude  are  merely  relative  ;  and  both  being 
infinitely  divisible,  all  immensities  of  either  kind  can  be  con- 
ceived upon  an  infinitesimal  scale.  The  sphere  is  of  the  Spirit's 
own  making,  breathed  forth  from  its  own  essence,  tinted, 
accordingly,  with  the  distinctive  hue  of  its  own  individuality. 
If  all  the  spheres  exhaled  by  all  the  Spirits  were  seen  as  one,  it 
would  be  as  a  sphere  of  diamond  whiteness ;  for  its  univer- 
sality would  then  be,  not  specific,  but  absolute.  This  by  the 
way. 

Brooding  over  its  own  sphere,  the  Spirit  with  which  we 
are  concerned  recognises  therein  a  faithful  manifestation  of 
one  of  its  two  opposed  and  balanced  tendencies — its  universalism, 
to  wit.  Sinking  deeper  into  its  act  of  contemplation,  it  finds 
increasing  satisfaction  in  exploring  the  inexhaustible  wealth 
self-revealed  to  its  ken.  Nebulae,  galaxies,  constellations, 
solar  systems,  meteors,  comets — all  are  infallibly  fulfilling 
their  predetermined  roles.  Suns  rise  and  set,  ages  come  and 
go,  fiery  vapours  condense,  new  orbs  are  belched  forth  from 
candescent  centres,  and,  taking  their  places  in  their  allotted 
orbits,  cool  down  into  planets  and  become  the  receptacles  of 
organic  life.  And  here  we  may  note  that,  wherever  it  finds 
individual  organisms,  the  brooding  Spirit  recognises  a  qualifica- 
tion of  its  otherwise  unquestioned  sway.  For  the  nucleus  of 


390  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

every  such  organism  glows  with  a  light  wherein  the  distinctive 
hue  of  our  Spirit's  individuality  is  over-tinted  by  some  hue 
of  like  yet  alien  source.  Its  own  light  in  its  purity,  though 
diffused  throughout,  and  even  constituting  the  sphere,  is,  as 
yet,  nowhere  shining  in  unmixed  and  concentrated  form. 
Its  tendency  to  individual  unitary  self-expression  remains 
thus  unsatisfied  ;  but  for  that,  too,  the  hour  is  at  hand.  Gradu- 
ally, imperceptibly,  but  with  growing  intensity,  it  has  felt 
itself  drawn,  as  to  a  predestined  centre,  to  one  spot  on  the  tiny 
planet  where  its  earthly  course  is  to  be  run.  Thither  by  in- 
numerable pathways,  converging  along  the  lines  of  least  resist- 
ance, creep  the  flame-like  filaments  of  its  new  purpose,  securely 
threading  their  way  through  the  intricate  labyrinth  of  heredity, 
to  emerge,  fused  and  blended,  at  the  moment  of  its  birth  among 
men.  Is  it  only  my  fancy  that  the  brightness  of  that  celestial 
Spirit  is  now  a  little  dimmed  by  the  intensity  with  which  it 
broods  upon  its  pastime,  or  its  task  ?  Does  it  hope  then  to 
glean  from  this  experiment  some  indespensable  new  factor  of 
spirituality  for  its  own  behoof  ?  The  paltry  and  so  dearly 
purchased  joys  of  the  average  human  existence  cannot  in 
themselves  afford  any  sort  of  recompense  for  the  even  partial 
forfeiture  of  its  delights  in  the  Elysian  fields. 

That  such  joys  are  of  little  account  in  its  estimation  seems 
evident  from  the  indifference  with  which  it  accepts  for  its  ter- 
restrial embodiment  a  life  of  success  or  failure,  of  ease  or  agony, 
of  glory  or  shame.  Such  trivialities,  as  all  the  wise  bear 
witness,  are,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Spirit,  of  infinitesimal 
account.  Its  gold  can  be  garnered  from  the  most  unlikely 
sources  ;  its  mysterious  ends  are  subserved  by  any  and  every 
fate. 

The  above  purports  to  be  a  symbolic  representation l  of 
the  creative  activity  of  a  somewhat  exalted  entity ;  of  course 
we  must  be  prepared  to  admit  infinite  gradations  of  rank. 
Growth,  on  the  spiritual  plane,  presumably  results  from  the 
slow  accretion  of  experiences  gleaned  in  some  such  way  as  I 
have,  greatly  daring,  ventured  to  suggest.  I  frankly  confess 
that  in  contemplating  the  apparent  emptiness  and  futility  of 
1  Not,  of  course,  a  scientific  description. 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    391 

the  great  majority  of  human  lives,  doubts  have  occurred 
whether,  to  such  lives,  the  permanent  substratum  be  not  alto- 
gether lacking.  But  it  is  perhaps  more  logical  to  assume  that 
they  are  manifestations  of  comparatively  undeveloped  or 
embryonic  souls,  than  that  they  are  the  mere  shadows  which 
they  at  first  sight  appear  to  be.  Such  embryonic  entities  will 
adumbrate  a  cosmic  scheme  far  simpler  and  less  complex  than 
that  which  I  have  suggested  above.  And  into  a  sphere  corre- 
spondingly meagre  and  narrow  their  phenomenal  representatives 
will  be  born.  No  two  individuals  inhabit  precisely  the  same 
universe  ;  we  find  without  us  only  what  we  already  possess 
within. 

I  have  committed  myself  to  the  opinion  that  all  human 
experiences,  both  active  and  passive,  are  determined  from 
within  by  the  occult  will  of  the  noumenal  ego.  This  point,  so 
far  as  "  passive  "  experiences  are  concerned,  requires  further 
elucidation.  Such  a  view  follows  naturally — not,  perhaps, 
inevitably — from  the  rejection  of  external  or  mechanical 
causation,  which,  as  all  mathematicians  allow,  ultimately 
involves  impossibilities,  or  at  least,  inconceivabilities.  But 
it  might  still  be  held  that  the  noumenal  ego,  in  determining 
the  career  of  its  empirical  ego,  was  constrained  by  some  inner 
necessity,  not  acting  freely  or  consciously  ;  and  this  possibility 
I  fully  admit.  I  certainly  incline  to  the  opinion  that  there 
may  be  truth  in  the  doctrine  of  Karma,  an  ancient  doctrine 
recently  revived  by  theosophists  and  others.  But  karmic  law 
must  be  conceived  as  limiting  that  which  is  intermediate  in 
ontological  rank  between  the  Spirit  and  the  body — the  "  soul," 
in  fact,  not  the  noumenal  ego.  The  latter  would  be  unduly 
degraded  by  the  admission  that  its  activities  were  determined 
by  considerations  of  temporary  welfare  or  misery ;  or  that  it 
needed  to  expiate  faults  or  errors.  It  is  of  the  soul  that  Plato 
speaks  in  his  allegory  at  the  close  of  the  Republic,  wherein 
Er  describes  how  lots  are  cast  by  those  about  to  enter  terrestrial 
existence  ;  and  the  order  of  choice  of  good  or  evil  destinies 
thereby  determined.  Every  one  will  recall  the  grim  humour 
of  the  episode  concerning  the  one  who  had  drawn  the  first  lot, 
who  immediately  "  advanced  and  chose  the  most  absolute 


392  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

despotism  he  could  find.  But  so  thoughtless  was  he,  and 
greedy,  that  he  had  not  carefully  examined  every  point  before 
making  his  choice  ;  so  that  he  failed  to  remark  that  he  was 
fated  therein,  among  other  calamities,  to  devour  his  own 
children.  ...  It  was  a  truly  wonderful  sight,  Er  said,  to 
watch  how  each  soul  selected  its  life — a  sight  at  once  melancholy 
and  ludicrous  and  strange." 

Here  we  have  a  picture  rather  of  blind  instinct  than  of 
spiritual  discrimination ;  but  the  points  to  note  are,  first,  that 
Plato  supports  my  suggestion  of  the  unity  of  a  given  career, 
as  inclusive  of  all  predestined  experiences,  and,  secondly,  that 
only  highly  developed  souls  are  in  a  position  to  recognise  the 
fact  of  their  being  each  one  overshadowed  by  a  higher  principle 
— the  true  ego — of  which,  in  so  far  as  they  fail  to  assimilate 
and  identify  themselves  with  its  transcendent  purpose  and 
point  of  view,  they  remain  the  mere  shadowy  and  ephemeral 
puppets.  But  as  to  my  main  contention,  that  what  we,  each 
one  of  us,  undergo,  is  as  truly  a  factor  of  self-expression  as 
what  we  achieve  ;  that,  I  think,  is  largely  a  matter  of  everyday 
observation.  Is  it  not  obvious  that  the  persistency  with  which 
certain  men  are  dogged  by  ill-luck,  or  favoured  with  prosperity, 
often  reaches  a  degree  which  it  would  be  absurd  to  attribute 
to  mere  coincidence  ?  The  Scandinavians,  in  praising  a  hero, 
would  often  say  of  him  that  he  had  a  look  of  good-luck  about 
him.  And  in  considering  the  lives  of  great  men,  poets,  and 
others,  who  has  not  been  struck  by  the  strange  dramatic 
affinity  between  the  ideal  aspirations  of  the  men  and  the  appar- 
ently fortuitous  facts  of  their  destiny  ?  The  truth  is,  that 
the  incidents  of  our  lives,  even  those  vulgarly  ranked  as  merely 
external,  are  as  essentially  factors  of  our  individuality  as  our 
very  bodies — perhaps  even  more  so.  In  his  treatise  on  Life 
after  Death,  Gustav  Theodor  Fechner  has  developed  the 
hypothesis  that  it  is  precisely  in  the  changes  produced  in  our 
social  and  general  environment  during  this  life  that  our  post- 
humous existence  is  consciously  embodied  ;  and  from  this  takes 
the  starting-point  of  its  new  and  wider  activity.  Every  thought, 
word,  and  action  of  our  present  life  contributes,  according  to 
this  theory,  to  the  formation  of  the  spiritual  body  which  we 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    393 

shall  inherit  after  death.  "  Whatever  in  this  world  has  become, 
through  the  existence  of  a  certain  human  being,  different  from 
what  it  would  have  been  without  him,  helps  to  constitute  his 
new  existence,  grown  out  of  the  common  root  of  all  existence, 
and  made  up,  partly  of  solid  institutions  and  works,  partly 
of  moving  and  spreading  effects,  similarly  to  the  way  our  present 
body  is  made  up  of  solid  material,  and  of  changeable  material 
kept  together  by  the  solid.  ..."  "  Goethe,  Schiller,  Napoleon, 
Luther,  are  still  alive  among  us,  self-conscious  individuals 
thinking  and  acting  with  us,  in  a  higher  state  of  development 
now,  no  longer  bound  up  within  a  narrow  body,  but  pervading 
the  world  which  they  in  their  lifetime  instructed,  edified,  de- 
lighted, ruled,  and  producing  effects  surpassing  those  of  which 
we  are  generally  aware." 

It  is  curious  to  note  how  neatly  this  theory  of  the  nature 
of  man's  posthumous  existence  falls  in  with  my  own  sug- 
gestion as  to  the  true  explanation  of  the  facts  of  heredity,  that 
is,  that  whatever  events  and  processes  directly  contribute  to 
the  constitution  of  a  given  personality,  are  truly  to  be  regarded 
as  elements  of  its  antenatal  existence.  It  is,  to  my  mind,  some- 
what strange  that  Fechner  should  seemingly  have  overlooked 
the  obvious  fact  that  if  death  is  not  conceded  to  be  the  end, 
neither  should  we  expect  to  find  that  birth  is  the  beginning  of 
individuality. 

But,  as  William  James  has  well  said,  we  of  the  twentieth 
century  like  our  metaphysics  "  thick  "  J — so  far  as  we  have 
any  tolerance  for  or  understanding  of  them.  We  have  little 
use  for  the  old-fashioned  "  thin  "  variety — for  tenuous  abstrac- 
tions. Our  metaphysic  must,  in  other  words,  be  brought  down 
forcibly  into  the  sphere  of  the  concrete  ;  or  our  concrete  elevated 
to  the  sphere  of  metaphysic. 

Renouncing,  therefore,  for  the  moment,  our  polemical 
attitude  towards  the  current  view  of  causality,  and  assuming, 
as  we  must  after  all  assume,  the  at  least  provisional  validity 
of  our  faith  in  the  interaction  of  material  and  psychic  entities, 
let  us,  along  the  lines  of  commonsense  inference,  consider  some 

1  Not,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of  turbidity,  but  in  that  of  being  detailed  and 
full  of  reality. 


394  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

facts  bearing  upon  the  nature  and  power  of  Individuality.  In 
our  section  on  the  Natural  History  of  Purpose  we  saw  how  the 
emergence,  gradual  or  critical,  of  a  central  self-conscious  aim 
was  the  most  important  energising  and  unifying  factor  of  our 
great  men's  careers.  How  a  purpose  that  was  to  prove  sub- 
stantial and  effective  was  never  something  fortuitous  or  capri- 
cious ;  but,  whether  firmly  grasped  or  instinctively  adopted 
from  the  first,  or  developed  through  a  series  of  tentative  more 
or  less  mimetic  essays,  always  bore  a  genuine  relation  to  inborn 
faculty,  its  only  adequate,  lasting  foundation.  Here,  then,  we 
see  at  once  that  Purpose,  the  root  of  initiative,  is  never  some- 
thing grafted  from  without,  is  in  no  ultimate  sense  of  extraneous 
origin,  but  grows  up  from  its  hidden  source,  in  most  cases  quite 
independently,  for  a  time,  of  the  conscious  will  of  its  possessor. 
From  our  point  of  view,  which  is,  that  the  body  is  as  truly  a 
part  of  the  mind  as  the  mind  is  a  part  of  the  (seen  or  unseen) 
body,  all  those  organic  subconscious  processes  of  growth  and 
development  which  pave  the  way  for  the  formation  and  emerg- 
ence of  purpose  or  initiative,  are  to  be  conceived  not  physio- 
logically, but  psychically.  They  are  unapprehended  phases  of 
psychic  growth  and  integration,  all  destined  to  contribute  factors 
of  more  or  less  relevance  and  significance  to  the  fully  equipped 
character  and  capacity  of  the  individual.  And  if  the  so-called 
physical  processes  contribute,  who  will  venture  to  deny  the 
occasional  but  momentous  intervention  of  formative  influences 
of  higher,  even  of  highest,  origin.  What,  for  example,  I  have 
called  the  "  noumenal  ego  "  must  not  be  conceived  as  a  being 
altogether  apart,  a  mere  overshadowing  entity.  It  is  rather 
the  technical  designation  of  our  supreme  potentiality,  of  a 
something  striving  to  super-actualise  itself,  through  the  psycho- 
physical  organism.  Any  emergency  demanding  a  sudden 
increment  of  insight  or  power  may,  for  aught  we  know,  furnish 
the  conditions  favouring  its  intervention — not  perhaps  its 
direct,  but  its  mediate,  intervention. 

Equipped,  soon  or  late,  with  his  definite  self-conscious  aim, 
our  individual  confronts  the  social  environment,  which,  in  one 
way  or  another,  he  seeks  to  use,  control,  or  modify.  The  reward 
of  success  in  matters  of  narrow  import  and  on  a  small  scale 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    395 

will  be — well,  success  itself ; — but  that  does  not  concern  us  now. 
We  are  concerned  here  and  now  with  individuals  who  have, 
in  divers  ways  and  degrees,  aimed  at  and  achieved  what, 
significantly  enough,  the  world  terms  "  immortality"  This 
means,  if  it  mean  anything,  that  the  import  and  magnitude 
of  their  achievements  are,  by  universal  consensus,  estimated 
as  beyond  estimation,  as  of  infinite  significance.  They  have 
brought  something  to  bear  upon  their  contemporaries  which 
the  whole  world  could  not  "  down,"  but  has  more  or  less  re- 
luctantly, more  or  less  tardily  and  angrily,  accepted,  once  for 
all,  as  a  permanently  active,  a  creative  element  of  the  racial 
experience.  That  such  magnificent  victories  are  not  cheaply 
bought,  rather  that  they  are  in  most  cases  wrung  from  the 
grudging  hands  of  the  vanquished  world  only  at  the  price  of 
extreme  toil  and  suffering,  we  have  seen  evidence  enough  and 
to  spare.  Even  these  do  not  suffice  :  there  must,  in  addition, 
have  been  the  aid  of  that  indefinable  something,  the  stroke  of 
that  magic  wand,  which  we  call  genius.  Toil,  suffering,  genius  : 
these  three  are  great ;  but  the  greatest  of  these  is  genius. 

And  by  genius  one  means,  I  suppose,  an  inborn  organically 
based  temperamental  fiair,  an  intuitive  quasi-instinctive  ap- 
preciation of  some  hitherto  undiscerned  or  unexploited,  but 
essentially  significant,  aspect  of  life — practical,  aesthetic,  theo- 
retical, or  ethico-religious  —  involving,  of  course,  a  further 
power  of  unique,  vital,  adequate  response  to  the  stimulus 
constituted  thereby.  A  man  of  genius  is,  in  fact,  one  who,  in 
essentials,  declines  to  be  urged  a  posteriori  by  the  kicks  of  cir- 
cumstance— although  these  are  not  likely  to  be  wanting — but 
maintains  that  predominance  of  inborn  faculty  which  is  the 
birthright  of  every  freeborn  individual.  His  life  thus  conveys 
the  impression  of  something  free,  spontaneous  :  I  am  tempted 
to  say  that  he  lives  a  priori.1  One  must  not,  of  course,  overlook 
the  obvious  fact  that  he  is  the  representative  of  the  Zeitgeist ; 
that  his  innovatory  ideas  are  not  born  in  vacuo,  but  are  in 
vital  relation  to  those  of  his  predecessors  and  contemporaries. 
Still  these  ideas  are  not  his  own  until  his  will  has  adopted  them ; 
and,  in  quoting  the  following  sentence  on  the  social  origin  of 

1  In  the  sense  that  he  does  what  he  likes,  and  likes  what  he  does. 


396  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

thought,  I  must  enter  a  caveat  against  the  mechanical  con- 
ception of  the  process  as  therein  denned.  "  Everyone," 
writes  Theodor  Hertzka,  "  stands  in  a  not  merely  external,  but 
also  an  internal,  indissoluble  relation  of  contact  with  those  who 
are  around  him ;  he  imagines  that  he  thinks  and  feels  and  acts 
as  his  own  individuality  prompts,  but  he  thinks,  feels,  and  acts 
for  the  most  part  in  obedience  to  an  external  influence  from 
which  he  cannot  escape — the  influence  of  the  spirit  of  the  age 
which  embraces  all  heads,  all  hearts,  and  all  actions."  1  So 
far  as  this  implies  that  great  men  are  the  mere  instruments  of 
an  alien  influence  and  power,  I  entirely  dissent ;  it  is  rather  the 
futile  phantasmal  majority  who  are  to  be  so  regarded.  With 
Fechner,  I  hold  rather  that  "  those  men  who  have  accom- 
plished great  things  in  the  world  were  enabled  to  do  so  by  their 
insight  into  the  spiritual  tendency  of  the  period  in  which  they 
lived,  and  they  succeeded  because  they  made  their  free  acting 
and  thinking  agree  vnth  that  tendency,2'  while  other  men,  perhaps 
just  as  great  and  sincere,  failed,  because  they  opposed  that 
tendency.  ...  It  is  not  the  slave  under  the  taskmaster  that 
does  the  better  work."  3 

But  all  history  teems  with  evidence  of  the  incalculable 
power  of  initiative,  the  irresistible  impetus  of  a  will  illuminated 
by  genuine  insight  and  weighted  by  undeviating  purpose. 
Think  how  Caesar  at  Alesia,  at  Pharsalia,  at  Munda,  wrung 
overwhelming  victory  from  the  very  jaws  of  disaster  ;  then 
remember  how,  in  Gaul,  in  Africa,  in  Spain,  his  best  generals 
had  only  to  be  left  awhile  to  their  own  devices,  and  everything 
would  begin  to  go  awry  with  the  legions.  Of  Cromwell,  in 
relation  to  the  other  Puritan  captains,  precisely  the  same  can 
be  said.  Think  of  Charlemagne's  long,  practically  single-handed, 
ultimately  triumphant  struggle  to  reduce  to  order  the  chaotic 
elements  of  western  Christendom ;  of  William  the  Silent's 
great  part  in  the  extrication  of  the  Netherlands  from  the  grip 
of  Catholic  Spain.  Think  of  the  difference  made  to  our  national 
power  and  prestige  by  the  courage  and  toil  of  Drake ;  of  the 

1  Fredand,  by  Theodor  Hertzka,  trans,  by  A.  Ransom,  p.  224. 

2  Italics  mine. 

3  On  Life  after  Death,  by  G.  T.  Fechner,  trans,  by  H.  Wernekke,  pp.  56-57. 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    397 

awe  inspired  in  all  Spanish  breasts  by  his  name,  from  Lisbon 
to  Vera  Cruz,  from  the  Bay  of  Biscay  to  the  argosy-haunted 
waves  of  the  Caribbean.  Think,  then,  of  Richelieu,  conceiving 
in  the  obscurity  of  Lu£on  that  dream  of  humbling  the  anti- 
monarchic  power  of  the  Huguenots,  which,  twenty  years  later, 
was  triumphantly  realised  in  the  surrender  of  La  Rochelle. 
Of  Richelieu  who,  from  the  first,  set  before  himself  the  object 
of  achieving  that  political  pre-eminence  towards  which,  through 
countless  dangers  and  intrigues,  he  unfalteringly  held  upon  his 
way.  Remember  Frederick,  banned  by  the  Empire,  harassed, 
jaded,  prematurely  aged,  meditating  suicide,  confronted  by 
forces  trebling  his  own  ;  his  capital  twice  pillaged,  his  territory 
of  Halbenstadt  plundered  by  the  French  ;  Silesia  and  Saxony 
all  but  reconquered  ;  yet  always  cool,  alert,  resourceful,  ventur- 
ing his  all  in  battle  after  battle  ;  the  strength  of  his  enemies 
constantly  increasing,  as  his  own  waned  ;  himself  the  survivor 
of  no  less  than  forty  of  his  generals  ;  always  apparently  losing 
ground,  until,  as  he  said,  nothing  but  a  miracle  could  save  him  ; 
yet,  nevertheless,  always  miraculously  unconquered ;  and  in 
the  end — unconquerable.  Remember  Nelson,  tabooed  by 
officialdom,  frail  and  semi-consumptive,  shelved  for  five  years 
(his  thirtieth  to  thirty-fifth),  maimed,  half-blinded,  passed  over 
for  his  inferiors ;  yet  confidently  predicting  the  day  when  the 
ignoring  or  belittling  of  his  merit  would  no  longer  be  possible, 
when  he  should  not  merely  be  gazetted,  but  have  "  a  whole 
gazette  to  himself."  Remember  how  that  Convention  of 
Vendemiare,  year  four,  threatened  by  Lepelletier's  forty  thousand 
fighting  sectioners,  desperately  bethought  itself  of  "  the  Citizen 
Buonaparte,  unemployed  artillery  officer,  who  took  Toulon." 
How,  "  after  a  half -hour  of  grim  compressed  considering,"  the 
command  was  accepted  by  this  bronze  artillery  officer,  by 
whose  memorable  whiff  of  grape-shot  "  the  thing  we  specific- 
ally call  the  French  Revolution  was  blown  into  space,  and 
became  a  thing  that  was."  And  all  that  in  due  course  followed 
this  one  man's  definitive  assertion  of  a  positive,  masterful 
attitude  towards  the  chaotic  impulses  of  his  time.  Reconstruct 
for  yourself  the  superb  career  of  Lincoln  :  the  motherless,  mal- 
treated, penurious  and  illiterate  boyhood,  the  dogged  pursuit 


398  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  knowledge  dictated  by  some  blind  invincible  instinct,  the 
mastery  of  law,  the  conquest  of  popularity,  the  gradual  realisa- 
tion of  his  epochal  mission  of  emancipation,  the  patient  waiting 
on  events  whose  issue  he  alone  foresaw,  the  ultimate  dawning 
of  his  noontide  of  power  and  fame,  the  sure  guidance  of  national 
destiny  through  the  long  agony  of  civil  war.  Of  Lincoln  it 
has  been  well  said,  and  each  statement  has  deep  psychological 
significance  :  that  he  never  lacked  the  aid  of  true  friends  in  his 
many  troubles ;  that  he  always  rose  to  the  occasion,  however 
great,  however  unprecedented  its  demands  ;  that,  throughout 
his  life,  defeat  was  always  a  step  to  victory. 

Turning  now  to  the  representatives  of  Poetry,  Art,  and 
Music,  think  for  a  moment  of  the  significance  of  Dante's  divine 
achievement,  and  of  that  of  the  individuality  underlying  it, 
surely  the  supreme  example  of  the  poetic  type  hitherto  seen  on 
the  earth.  Poor,  exiled,  burdened  with  unmerited  shame,  we 
see  him  pass  on  his  weary  way,  a  lean  silent  figure,  with  locked 
lips  and  brooding  eyes.  Meantime,  within  his  breast,  as  in 
some  fiery  crucible,  the  facts  of  his  own  life,  of  his  turbulent 
crowded  age,  of  all  human  lives  and  ages,  are  being  magically 
transmuted  into  the  imperishable  gold  of  Art,  are  finding 
deathless  utterance  in  stanza  after  stanza  of  that  celestial 
song.  Stripped  bare  of  accidents  and  prevarications,  he  shows, 
as  his  purged  eyes  beheld  them,  the  essentials  of  human  motive 
and  conduct,  the  true  inwardness  of  Life.  The  mighty  symbols 
in  which  he  wrought  may  have  lost  much  of  the  awe  and  sanction 
which  they  held  for  him  and  his  contemporaries ;  but  never, 
while  man  walks  the  earth,  can  there  dawn  the  day  when  the 
spell  he  has  laid  on  our  hearts  will  be  utterly  loosened,  the 
laurel  stripped  from  his  brow.  In  a  mood,  far  from  rhetorical, 
with  no  consciousness  of  special  pleading,  I  ask  all  who  in  any 
degree  realise  the  occult  potency  of  Dante's  art  and  fame, 
whether  they  can  seriously  entertain  the  position  that  such  a 
spirit  as  his  was  in  any  ultimate  sense  a  merely  natural  product, 
a  transient  flame,  chance-begotten,  that  was  and  is  not. 

The  almost  perfect  unity  and  simplicity  of  aim,  which, 
considered  in  relation  to  the  vast  emotional  and  intellectual 
scope  of  his  mind,  renders  Dante's  individuality  so  intense  and 


7V""  A  39*- 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    399 

powerful,  is,  of  course,  wanting  in  the  case  of  Leonardo.  In 
him  we  apprehend  a  nature  far  less  deep  and  passionate,  yet 
in  some  important  respects  more  original  than  Dante's.  His 
intuitive  prevision  of  the  destiny  and  results  of  positive  methods 
of  research  amounted  to  no  less  than  a  specific  omniscience. 
There  is  practically  no  important  theoretical  generalisation  or 
utilitarian  triumph  known  to  us,  which  he,  living  four  hundred 
years  ago,  did  not  promise  to  posterity.  While,  in  his  art,  he 
so  transcended  the  limitations  of  his  own  mental  hardness  and 
positivity,  produced  on  his  contemporaries  so  stunning  an  effect 
of  supreme  power  and  significance,  that  the  virtual  destruction 
of  his  greatest  pictures  has  not  seriously  impaired  his  fame. 
Genius  will  out — and,  once  out,  is  not  easily  forgotten.  Its 
manifestation  is,  to  a  larger  extent  than  we  at  all  realise,  in- 
dependent of  a  man's  formal  and  official  achievements.  That, 
as  Schopenhauer  would  say,  is  no  doubt  the  reason  why  common- 
place persons  find  it  so  easy  to  detect  and  shun. 

Still  they  defile  before  us,  the  spirits  of  the  Lords  of  Art, 
mocking  our  shallow  science  by  the  memories  they  evoke.  "Was 
I,  too,  a  shadow  ?  "  demands  Titian.  "  I,  whose  passionate 
absorption  in  colour,  form,  life,  and  the  ever  fuller,  grander 
expression  of  their  glory,  almost  a  century's  toil  could  not 
satiate,  barely  availed  to  chasten  in  mode,  leaving  its  fiery  essence 
unsubdued."  And  Cervantes,  weary,  disillusioned,  relentlessly 
dogged  by  contumely,  yet  gay  to  the  last ;  beginning  at  fifty- 
five  the  work  which  was  to  sweep  the  pseudo-romance  of  knight- 
errantry  into  the  dust-bin,  and  to  establish  its  author  by  the  side 
of  the  world  humourists,  Aristophanes,  Rabelais,  and  Shake- 
speare ?  The  life  of  Mozart,  again,  presents  to  the  student  of 
Individuality  a  subject  of  supreme  interest,  as  affording  in 
almost  ideal  purity  the  type  of  aesthetic  genius.  Analysis  is 
baffled  by  the  very  simplicity  of  the  problem  ;  to  discriminate 
between  his  faculties  or  motives  is  like  trying  to  resolve  an 
elemental  substance.  He  was  not  merely  a  great  musician, 
the  greatest,  not  merely,  as  Rossini  well  said,  "  the  only 
musician,"  he  was  Music  incarnate,  the  personification  of  his 
art. 

Of  Goethe's  achievement,  Von  Hermann  Grimm  says  :  "He 


400  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

has  created  our  literature  and  our  speech.  Before  him,  both 
were  without  value  in  the  world-mart  of  the  nations  of  Europe." 
This  is  true  ;  and  it  is  much  to  say  of  any  man  ;  yet  how  far  it 
is  from  conveying  any  adequate  sense  of  the  difference  made 
to  the  worlds  of  thought  and  conduct  by  the  revelation  of  this 
most  powerful,  complex,  and  fascinating  personality.  Goethe 
himself  was  far  from  content  to  be  classified  as  a  mere  poet 
and  litterateur.  He  regarded  all  his  actions  as  of  symbolic 
import,  attaching  as  much  value  to  his  statesmanship,  his 
mineralogical  and  botanical  speculations — yes,  even  to  his 
lightest  amours — as  to  Faust  or  Wilhelm  Meister.  He  "  saw 
round  "  everything  that  he  did  ;  consequently,  nothing  that 
he  did  can  be  dismissed  as  inessential.  He  was  the  first  con- 
sistent exponent  of  the  anti-Christian  ideal  of  self-realisation, 
that  is,  the  first  of  the  Moderns.  Yet  no  man  ever  showed  a 
deeper  understanding  of  the  Christian  ideal  of  self-abnegation. 

Side  by  side  with  the  majestic  Goethe  walks  Beethoven, 
the  greatest  spirit  that  ever  devoted  itself  to  music  ;  Beethoven, 
who  achieved,  once  and  for  all,  the  miraculous  feat  of  translat- 
ing pure  intellect  into  terms  of  the  emotions.  Or,  if  you  prefer 
it  that  way,  who  transmuted  personal  passion  into  universal 
aspiration.  For,  unlike  Goethe,  who  seldom  opened  his  lips 
without  saying  something  memorable,  Beethoven's  intellectu- 
ality was  verbally  inarticulate  ;  it  had  to  express  itself  in  music. 

To  appreciate  the  real  greatness  that  underlay  the  genial 
facility  of  Walter  Scott's  talent,  one  does  not  think  of  him  in 
the  heyday  of  his  prosperity,  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  position 
such  as  no  other  man  had  ever  won  by  the  pen  alone,  "  his 
society  courted  by  station,  power,  wealth,  beauty,"  his  castle 
crowded  with  merry  guests,  his  works — the  annual  profits  of 
the  novels  alone  were  £10,000 — "  the  daily  food  of  educated 
Europe."  his  domain  ever  growing,  his  imagination  teeming 
with  new  plots,  incidents,  characters.  All  was  roseate  then  : 
Scott  himself  owned  to  misgivings  that  such  prosperity  could 
not  last.  When  his  son,  Cornet  Scott,  died,  Scott  said  prophetic- 
ally, "  I  feel  as  if  there  would  be  less  sunshine  for  me  from 
this  day  forth."  And  sunshine,  as  well  as  children,  he  had 
always  loved.  Scott's  highest  recorded  hour  was  that,  I  always 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    401 

think,  years  later,  when  widowed,  harassed,  insolvent,  conscious 
of  steadily  waning  power  and  popularity,  on  James  Ballantyne's 
reminding  him  that  a  motto  was  wanting  for  a  chapter  of 
Count  Robert  of  Paris,  he  turned  away,  and  looked  out  for 
a  moment  at  the  gloomy  weather  ;  then  penned  these  lines  : — 

"  The  storm  increases,  'tis  no  sunny  shower 
Fostered  in  the  moist  breast  of  March  or  April, 
Or  such  as  parched  Summer  cools  his  lips  with. 
Heaven's  windows  are  Sung  wide  ;  the  inmost  deeps 
Call  in  hoarse  greeting  one  upon  another ; 
On  comes  the  flood  in  all  its  foaming  horrors, 
And  where's  the  dike  shall  stop  it?  " 

That,  if  you  please,  was  the  real  thing.1 

Anon  passes  Turner ;  and  to  him,  too,  we  bid  farewell, 
doing  homage  to  as  eccentric  and  paradoxical  a  temperament 
as  ever  enshrined  genius.  A  dumb  poet,  a  generous  miser, 
an  inspired  debauchee,  a  refined  hog,  creator  of  the  delicate 
modern  art  of  water-colour,  space-lover,  light-bringer,  sym- 
bolist ;  rivalling  Shelley  in  the  exquisite  eethereality  of  his 
imagination,  Shakespeare  in  its  breadth  of  construction, 
wealth,  and  fidelity  to  nature.  Last  comes  Flaubert :  the 
self-torturer,  the  Titan,  the  bourgeois  demi-god ;  proudly 
exalted  above  ambition ;  hater  of  all  formulae  and  of  every 
kind  of  pettiness  ;  living  only  for  beauty ;  and  finding  it  not 
less  in  what  meaner  souls  regard  as  vile  and  contemptible, 
than  in  what  they  have  bespattered  with  meaningless  praise. 

Taking  now  a  farewell  glance  at  our  heroes  of  Thought, 
we  shall  find  here,  too,  abundant  evidence  of  that  spontaneity 
of  manifestation  and  continuously  expanding  influence  char- 
acteristic of  every  individuality  worthy  of  the  name.  It  is 
no  doubt  common,  for  example,  to  overrate  the  influence  of 
Bacon  upon  scientific  method ;  to  speak  as  if,  before  him,  the 
practice  of  inductive  and  experimental  research  had  been 
altogether  unknown.  This  is  not  merely  untrue  ;  it  is  absurdly 
wide  of  the  mark.  Yet  Bacon,  even  in  his  lifetime,  was  a  man 

1  One  must  also  remember  the  fact  that  Scott  has  written    some  of  the 
supreme  lyrics  of  the  English  language,  e.g.,  "  Pibroch  of  Donuil  Dhu,"  "  Proud 
Maisie,"  "  He  is  gone  on  the  Mountain." 
26 


402  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

of  cosmopolitan  repute  ;  his  inexhaustible  zeal  and  unceasing 
activity  in  the  cause  of  the  "  new  learning  "  were  a  light  by 
no  means  hidden.  Granted  the  truth  of  Harvey's  gibe,  that 
Bacon  "  wrote  philosophy  like  a  Lord  Chancellor,"  thev  alue 
of  those  writings  and  their  propagandist  effect  are  not  neces- 
sarily impaired.  The  point  is,  not  that  this  or  the  other  thinker 
had  casually  remarked  the  need  of  giving  experiment  priority 
over  speculation  ;  that  this  or  the  other  observer  had  empirically 
stumbled  upon  the  right  road ;  but  that  this  man  devoted 
his  life  to  "  dwelling  on  the  necessity  of  a  graduated  induction, 
through  successive  steps  of  generality,  at  a  time  when  men 
had  just  begun  to  perceive  that  they  must  begin  from  ex- 
perience in  some  way  or  other."  Mill  has  pointed  out  the 
paramount  importance  of  "  his  principle  of  elimination — that 
great  logical  instrument  which  he  had  the  immense  merit  of 
first  bringing  into  general  use."  His  very  excess  of  zeal,  his 
exaggerated  view  of  the  role  of  method,  as  distinguished  from 
inborn  capacity,  no  doubt  served  his  cause.  For  he  "  thought 
to  discover  a  method  so  exhaustive  as  to  be  as  certain  in  its 
results  as  a  proposition  of  Euclid,  so  mechanical,  that  when 
once  understood  all  men  might  equally  employ  it,  yet  so 
startling  that  it  was  to  be  as  a  new  sun  to  the  borrowed  beams 
of  the  stars."  He  conceived  Nature  as  finite,  and  omniscience 
as  an  attainable  goal.  And  there  was  this  much  truth  in  his 
forecast,  that  Science  has  proved  the  friend  of  mediocrity,  a 
leveller,  an  intellectual  democrat.  "  I  have  been  accustomed," 
wrote  Darwin,  "  to  think  second,  third,  and  fourth-rate  men 
of  very  high  importance,  at  least  in  the  case  of  Science."  The 
destiny  that  assigned  to  a  great  lawyer  the  task  of  formul- 
ating the  code  and  charter  of  experimental  science,  has  been 
amply  justified  by  posterity's  endorsement  and  continuance 
of  his  work. 

No  one,  I  suppose,  will  question  the  immense  value  and 
fertility  of  Galileo's  lifework.  If  ever  a  single  mind  produced 
an  immediate  and  obvious  effect  upon  the  world  of  thought, 
gave  a  distinct  lift  to  the  scientific  effort  of  his  age,  it  was  his. 
The  versatility  of  his  genius  was  extraordinary  :  in  almost 
every  page  of  his  writings  may  be  found  an  allusion  to  some 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    403 

new  and  striking  experiment,  or  the  germ  of  some  illuminating 
hypothesis.  But  all  his  varied  powers  were  dominated  by 
the  one  central  aim  :  from  the  first  he  had  felt  himself  destined 
to  be  the  pioneer  of  a  new  school,  rational  and  experimental ; 
and,  from  first  to  last,  he  remained  the  inveterate  foe  of  schol- 
astic apriorism.  All  his  inventions  and  discoveries  were  the 
outcome  of  some  need  created  by  the  logical  development  of 
this  purpose.  And  against  the  passion  that  impelled  him  in 
his  quest  for  truth,  alike  the  stubborn  incredulity  of  official 
conservatism  and  the  brutal  machinery  of  ecclesiastical  re- 
pression proved  helpless  and  futile  in  the  end. 

Of  William  Harvey  it  may  suffice  to  say,  that  the  whole 
magnificent  structure  of  modern  biological  science  is  directly 
founded  on  the  bedrock  of  the  discovery  to  whose  proving  and 
overproving  he  so  single-heartedly  devoted  his  life.  Physiology, 
properly  so-called,  was  born  in  the  unrecorded  hour  when  there 
first  dawned  upon  him  a  clear  conception  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood.  Equally  fundamental,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
empirical  science,  even  though  philosophically  untenable,  is  the 
central  idea  or  motif  of  Descartes — that  identification  of  matter 
and  space  by  which  the  complexity  of  nature  was  made  subject 
to  the  clearness  and  precision  of  mathematical  treatment. 
The  very  limitations  of  Descartes'  mind  were  instrumental  in 
determining  the  immediate  adoption  and  development  of  his 
ideas.  For  they  were  opportune  limitations :  the  world 
needed  a  mechanical  philosophy.  The  man  who  said,  "  Give 
me  extension  and  motion,  and  I  will  construct  the  world,"  was 
a  disciple  of  Herbert  Spencer,  born  four  hundred  years  before 
his  time. 

Spinoza,  a  man  of  infinitely  greater  depth  of  intellect  than 
Descartes,  achieved,  during  his  lifetime,  at  most  a  succ&s 
d'estime.  On  the  other  hand,  his  posthumous  influence  has 
been,  and  still  is,  very  great.  His  ideas  have  filtered  down 
through  the  select  minds  of  readers  like  Goethe  and  Hegel : 
to  the  general  he  must  always  remain  caviare.  The  modern 
theory  of  the  Absolute  is  derived  mainly  from  Spinoza,  while 
in  his  Tractatm  Theologico  -  Politicus,  "  aniicipating  with 
wonderful  grasp  and  insight  almost  every  principle,  and  not  a 


404  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

few  of  the  results  "  of  its  labours,  he  has  made  himself  the  father 
of  what  is  now  called  the  "  higher  criticism."  And  when  one 
considers  the  vital  issues  involved  in  the  task  of  this  higher 
criticism,  one  begins  to  appreciate  the  true  dignity  of  the 
philosopher,  the  stupendous  responsibility  he  may  incur. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  insist  upon  the  importance  of  Newton's 
great  discovery  :  every  one  knows  that  scientific  laws,  being 
merely  a  set  of  "  brief  statements  resuming  the  relationship 
between  given  groups  of  facts,"  vary  in  rank  and  value  according 
as  they  include  a  greater  or  less  number  of  facts  within  their 
ken.  The  highest,  or,  say,  the  most  fundamental,  are  those 
laws  which,  like  Newton's  of  gravitation,  convey  information 
relevant  to  all  natural  processes  whatsoever.  "  Every  particle 
of  matter  is  attracted  by  or  gravitates  to  every  other  particle 
of  matter  with  a  force  inversely  proportional  to  the  squares  of 
their  distances."  How  simple,  and  sublime  !  As  to  whether 
any  such  thing  as  a  "  particle  of  matter  "  exists  or  is  conceivable 
— that  is  another  question.  But  Isaac  Newton — "  had  grasped 
the  secret  of  a  cosmic  circulation,  and  brooded  in  silence  over 
the  motion  of  the  spheres  for  more  than  twenty  years  before 
publishing  the  Principia.1 

The  work  done  by  Leibnitz,  like  that  of  Spinoza,  was  con- 
ceived on  too  grand  and  austere  a  scale  to  attain  the  full  com- 
prehension of  contemporaries.  No  man  ever  lived  more  whole- 
heartedly in  the  service  of  ideal  ends.  The  success  of  Descartes, 
a  comparatively  shallow  mind,  appears  almost  cheap  in  com- 
parison with  this  man's  unrecognised  and  unrewarded  toil. 
He  shared  the  common  fate  of  all  our  greatest  benefactors  ; 
for  although,  since  it  takes  two  to  make  a  quarrel,  he  escaped 
active  persecution,  almost  all  his  projects 2  were  checkmated 
by  the  cold  indifference  of  those  to  whom  they  ought  to  have 
appealed.  Certainly  his  mathematical  achievements  proved 
immediately  fruitful ;  it  was  his  presentation  of  the  calculus, 
not  Newton's,  which  was  taken  up  by  the  workers  of  his  day. 
"  To  find  symbols  and  formulae  for  the  representation  of  matters 

1  The  Growth  of  Truth,  Harveian  Oration,  1906,  W.  Osier. 
3  e.g.  that  of  religious  union,  for  which  he  worked  continuously  for  over 
thirty  years. 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    405 

of  fact  is  the  basis  of  scientific  method,  and  no  one  did  more  in 
this  direction  than  Leibnitz."  But  his  vastly  more  important 
philosophical  work  has  not  hitherto  received  a  tithe  of  the 
attention  it  deserves,  and  must  ultimately  attain.  The  time  of 
his  harvesting  is  drawing  near  :  in  the  forgotten  truths  which 
he  so  clearly  set  forth  will  be  found  the  only  corrective  of  the 
fallacies  inseparable  from  our  present  abuse  of  empiricism. 

Of  Kant's  influence  upon  thought  I  will  say  merely  this, 
that  the  iconoclastic  side  of  his  work,  certainly  the  more  power- 
ful and  congenial,  has  proved  far  more  effectual,  hitherto,  than 
his  maturer  efforts  at  reconstruction.  In  so  far  as  his  doctrine 
insists  upon  the  relativity  of  knowledge,  its  limitation  by  the 
conditions  of  sensory  experience,  it  has  naturally  proved  accept- 
able to  the  agnostic  spirit  of  the  century  that  divides  us  from 
his  own.  But  Kant  also  taught  that  the  mind  is  not  a  natural 
product  but  a  native  faculty  of  forms,  and  that  unity  is  not  the 
last  but  the  first  (a  priori)  stage  of  knowledge.  And  he  makes 
morality  rest  on  the  conviction  that  man  is  a  citizen  of  an 
(unknowable)  ideal  world,  and  on  conformity  with  an  ideal  that 
requires  eternity  for  its  realisation.  It  has  been  found  con- 
venient by  the  prophets  of  neo-Kantian  phenomenalism  to 
ignore  this  side  of  the  master's  teaching.  But  the  end  is 
not  yet. 

If  there  be  any  truth  in  Fechner's  theory  of  the  role  of 
man's  disembodied  spirit,  as  a  conscious  permeation  and  aug- 
mentation of  the  effects  initiated  in  its  earthly  career,  the 
spirit  of  Hegel  must  be  active  and  content  in  the  Fatherland 
of  to-day.  For  it  is  a  Hegelian  Germany  that  confronts  and 
menaces  our  own  loose-jointed,  happy-go-lucky  caricature 
of  an  Empire.  Hegelian  in  its  earnestness,  its  bourgeois 
domesticity  and  fecundity,  its  industrial  keenness  and  com- 
mercial thoroughness ;  Hegelian  in  the  relentless  rigour  of  its 
critical  scholarship,  the  dogged  quest  of  perfection  in  scientific 
method,  the  resolute  adherence  to  elaborate  plans  of  military 
and  naval  preparation  ;  Hegelian,  above  all,  in  its  austere  dis- 
regard of  personal  caprice,  where  public  interests  are  concerned, 
and  in  the  iron  strength  of  the  discipline  that  controls  "  the 
fell  incensed  points "  of  such  "  mighty  opposites "  as  Bis- 


406  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

marckian  Kaiserism  and  Marxian  Social  Democracy.  If  any- 
one considers  this  an  unwarranted  estimate  of  the  power  of  a 
thought  upon  the  nationality  which  both  produced  and  re- 
assimilated  it,  let  him  consider  our  last  example — that  of 
Darwin — and  hide  his  diminished  head.  For  the  reader  may 
rest  assured  that,  intellectually  speaking,  Darwin,  the  fortunate 
and  laborious  initiator  of  a  new  cosmological  epoch,  was  a  mere 
unenlightened  babe  in  comparison  with  Hegel. 

It  remains  to  cast  a  farewell  glance  upon  the  individuals 
of  our  ethico-religious  group.  With  reference  to  the  founder 
of  Christianity,  the  most  bigoted  adherent  of  the  old  theology 
ought  in  fairness  to  admit  that  my  theory  of  Individuality 
assigns  to  him  a  majestic  role  in  the  drama  of  the  human  spirit, 
a  decisive  influence  upon  the  destiny  of  mankind,  But  the 
Christ-Ideal,  so  far  as  that  can  be  identified  with  the  ideal  of 
the  man  Jesus,  has  hitherto  enjoyed  an  unfair  advantage  in 
the  spiritual  struggle  for  existence,  backed  up  as  it  has  been  by 
the  bribes  and  sanctions  of  supernatural  eschatology.  That 
advantage  it  must  for  the  future  forego  ;  henceforth  it  will 
have  to  take  its  place  in  the  spiritual  arena,  to  stand  or  fall  by 
its  merits  alone.  It  is  not  the  truths  taught  by  Jesus,  nor  the 
authentic  power  of  his  example,  but  merely  the  despotism  of 
the  closed  system  of  Christolatry,  that  is  being  specifically 
challenged  by  the  whole  modern  spirit.  And,  this  time  at 
least,  it  will  be  a  fight  to  the  finish. 

With  regard  to  the  character  of  St.  Paul,  I  incline  rather 
to  the  view  of  Arnold  than  to  that  of  Kenan.  Properly  under- 
stood, his  teaching  makes  for  enlightenment  not  for  obscur- 
antism, for  Catholicism  not  for  Hebraistic  Protestantism, 
for  the  spirit  not  the  letter.  Renan  says  of  him,  somewhat 
harshly,  that  his  writings  were  a  danger  and  a  snare,  the  cause 
of  the  principal  defects  of  Christian  theology.  "  Paul  was 
the  father  of  the  subtle  Augustine,  the  arid  Aquinas,  the  sombre 
Calvinist,  the  intolerant  Jansenist,  the  fierce  theology  that 
damns  and  predestines  to  damnation."  If  so,  it  is  because 
the  central  Pauline  doctrine  of  necrosis,  of  the  necessity  of 
dying  to  appetite  in  order  to  live  by  love  and  reason  (or  the 
Spirit),  has  been  grossly  misunderstood.  Renan,  when  he 


R.    \V.     KMKKSOX. 


To/acc  p. 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER    407 

penned  his  condemnation,  must  surely  have  forgotten  the 
divine  hymn  to  Love,  concerning  which  he  had  written,  "  Is 
it  not  much  to  have  indicated  this  capital  distinction  of  the 
eternal  religious  truths  and  of  those  which  fail  like  the  dreams 
of  early  life  ?  "  And  he  had  also  asked,  "  Is  it  not  enough  for 
immortality  to  have  written  that  word  :  '  Thel  etter  killeth, 
the  spirit  inaketh  alive  '  ?  " 

The  pure  ethical  passion  of  Marcus  Aurelius  is  a  memory 
of  inestimable  value  to  mankind,  to  think  of  which  is  to  recall 
Arnold's  poem,  wherein  he  makes  Nature  ask  of  her  nursling 
Man — 

"  That  strife  divine, 
Whence  was  it,  for  it  is  not  Mine  ?  " 

A  strife  differently,  but  not  less  intensely  depicted  in  the  vivid 
pages  of  Augustine's  masterpiece  of  introspective  autobio- 
graphy. Here,  surely,  is  a  record  of  agonised  self-scrutiny, 
which,  whatever  we  may  think  of  the  conclusions  reached — 
whether  as  those  of  one  victorious  or  vanquished  in  the  fray — 
will  never  lack  the  interest  of  readers  intent  on  exploration  of 
the  hidden  depths  of  their  own  being. 

The  sublime  patience,  monumental  industry,  suave  strength 
of  Gregory  the  Great,  are  an  eternal  rebuke  to  those  who  lightly 
or  intolerantly  blaspheme  the  majesty  of  the  historic  Church  ; 
and  would  ^fain  ignore  or  deny  her  incalculable  services  to 
mankind. 

And  what  of  Mahomet  ?  Of  him  I  would  say  that  he  appears 
to  me,  though  by  no  means  the  greatest,  in  some  ways  the 
sanest,  most  level-headed  of  all  founders  of  new  religions. 
For  he  outlived  the  fanaticism  of  youth  ;  and  proved,  beyond 
cavil,  not  merely  the  possibility,  but  the  necessity,  of  serving 
both  God  and  Mammon.  He  wisely  declined  martyrdom, 
preferring  to  see  that  his  innovations  were  established  under 
his  own  supervision,  rather  than  to  leave  them  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  those  who  came  after  him.  It  is  time  we  abandoned 
the  cant  of  expecting  from  supermen  a  self-immolation  which 
really  plays  into  the  hands  of  the  Philistines. 

Flowerlike  in  the  exquisite  pathos  of  its  humility  and  charm, 
sublime  in  the  obstinacy  of  its  unflinching  devotion  to  a  tran- 


408  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

scendent  ideal,  the  career  of  St.  Francis  illumines  the  opening 
years  of  the  thirteenth  century  with  a  transfiguring  radiance 
all  its  own.  Here,  if  ever,  was  a  life  substantially  self-deter- 
mined, submitted  "  in  scorn  of  consequence,"  and  without  any 
but  enforced  regard  for  prudential  counsels,  to  the  direction 
of  that  innermost  whisper  which  is  at  once  the  voice  of  instinct 
and  the  sole  authentic  guide  to  immortal  fame. 

The  same  almost  maniacal  persistence  in  a  self -chosen  path, 
tending  apparently  to  nothing  but  disgrace  and  ruin,  is,  in  a 
very  different  way,  manifested  in  the  career  of  Luther.  Genius 
is  always  imprudent,  always  errs  on  the  side  of  rashness — and 
is  always  justified  by  the  event.  Luther,  like  Mahomet,  has 
the  merit  of  having  escaped  martyrdom ;  he  lived  to  see  his 
cause,  if  by  no  means  triumphant,  securely  launched  on  its 
conquering  career.  Of  course,  the  gods  were  fighting  for  him  ; 
the  economic  and  political  circumstances  of  his  age  had  made 
ecclesiastical  decentralisation  inevitable.  But  it  is  character- 
istic of  great  men  that  the  gods  always  fight  on  their  side ;  and 
of  the  gods,  that  great  men  are  always  forthcoming  when  great 
work  has  to  be  done. 

Emerson's  is  another  striking  example  of  the  universality 
achieved  by  unflinching  reliance  upon  that  voice  of  intuition 
which  is  also  the  voice  of  instinct.  No  man  ever  posed  less, 
or  played  less  to  the  gallery ;  yet,  such  was  the  sureness  of  his 
revelation  of  the  highest  and  most  secret  hopes  of  the  human 
spirit,  such  the  confidence  with  which  he  endorsed  them,  that, 
even  in  his  own  lifetime,  his  work  received  an  impassioned 
welcome  from  readers  of  every  spiritual  class  and  of  many 
nations.  Mechanics,  men  of  science,  poets,  philosophers  have 
all  sat  at  his  feet,  acclaiming  him  the  inspired  prophet  of  a  new 
authentic  evangel.  His  is  probably  the  most  creative  mind 
that  America  has  yet  produced.  I  do  not  forget  Walt  Whitman, 
whom  it  is  nowadays  the  fashion  to  prefer  to  Emerson  ;  but 
this  is  a  preference  as  to  the  validity  of  which  I  have  the  gravest 
doubts.  There  is  too  much  pose  and  too  much  partisanship 
in  Whitman,  who,  moreover,  owed  far  more  to  the  older  man 
than  he  at  all  fairly  acknowledged.  "  Dionysian  spirits  "  are 
the  mode,  at  present,  among  the  demagogic  lions  (or  should  I 


KRNEST    RENAN. 

J-'ront  fi  fainting  by  I*n.  Konnat. 


To/ace  />.  408. 


INDIVIDUALITY  :  NATURE  AND  POWER       409 

say  "  tarantulas  ") l  of  the  "  New  Age  Press  "  ;  and  I  suppose 
Whitman  was  a  Dionysian,  and  Emerson  (formally)  an  Apol- 
lonian spirit.  Yet  Emerson's  is  the  freer  spirit :  he  dwells 
on  sunlit  heights,  ice-cold  and  crystal-clear,  and  holds  in 
aristocratic  disdain  such  tricks  of  bombast  and  rhetoric  as 
Whitman's  taste  could  allow  to  sully  his  page.  It  was  Emerson, 
not  Whitman,  who  earned  the  acknowledgment  of  Nietzsche. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  forget  Emerson's  limitations,  nor 
the  fact  that,  in  assuming  the  role  of  transcendental  free- 
thinker, he  to  some  extent  retained  that  of  Unitarian  minister. 
As  to  which  (meaning  no  offence  to  Unitarian  ministers),  one 
may  remark,  that  all  greatness  involves  an  element  of  Phili- 
stinism, were  it  only  as  ballast. 

We  come  now  to  Renan,  who,  under  the  almost  silken 
suavity  of  his  literary  manner,  concealed  a  purpose  far  more 
iconoclastic  than  that  of  Emerson.  "  Veritatem  dilexi  "  was 
his  chosen  motto  ;  and  no  truth  could  be  too  forbidding  to  be 
welcomed  with  unperturbed  tranquillity  by  the  terrible  sincerity 
of  his  intellect.  He  entertained  all  possibilities  ;  regard  for 
consistency  troubled  him  not  a  whit.  But  it  would  be  a  com- 
plete misinterpretation  of  his  character  and  aims  to  conclude 
that  Renan  assailed  superstitions  and  illusions  in  a  merely 
destructive  spirit.  It  was  the  immensity  of  his  faith  in  the 
ideal  (as  the  sole  reality)  that  emboldened  him  to  give  free  play 
to  the  critical  subtlety  which  astonished  the  world.  Instinctively 
optimistic,  he  loved  to  put  his  optimism  to  the  severest  possible 
tests  ;  to  entertain  the  most  extravagantly  pessimistic  hypo- 
theses. He  wished  that  the  new  era  of  religion,  of  whose  dawn 
he  conceived  himself  the  herald,  should  from  the  first  be 
characterised  by  a  fearless  frankness  of  discussion,  an  unreserved 
fidelity  to  the  ascertained  facts  of  life.  His  own  life  was  that  of 
a  saint,  inspired  by  the  most  abstract  sense  of  duty  ;  and  the 
day  will  infallibly  come  when  his  claim  to  have  done  more  for 
the  cause  of  religion  by  his  criticism  than  had  been  done  by 
all  the  apologists,  will  appear  not  merely  true  but  self-obvious. 

Here,  then,  I  bring  my  valedictory  survey  to  an  end,  not,  I 

1  The  New  Age  has  turned  over  a  new  leaf  since  the  above  was  written. 


4io  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

trust,  without  having  secured  at  least  the  sympathy  of  the  reader 
with  my  view  of  the  power  and  significance  of  Individuality. 
I  plead  for  the  supremacy  of  the  teleological  as  opposed  to  the 
dynamic  point  of  view,  in  approaching  the  problem  of  human 
nature,  which  is  also  the  problem  of  Spirit.  I  should  like  to 
have  added  a  chapter  on  the  probable  destiny  of  the  four  main 
types  into  which  I  have,  roughly  and  provisionally,  divided 
my  examples.  I  will  just  say  this,  that  I  have  a  strong  sus- 
picion that  the  great  men  of  the  future  will  commonly  lend  them- 
selves in  even  less  satisfactory  measure  to  any  such  classifica- 
tion, than  we  have  found  to  be  the  case  with  those  of  past  ages. 
The  new  type  of  greatness  adumbrated  by  such  men  as  Whit- 
man, Tolstoy,  Wagner,  Nietzsche,  Weininger,  Shaw,  is  hardly 
classifiable  as  practical,  aesthetic,  intellectual,  or  ethico- 
religious.  It  is  all  these  together — and  an  undefinable  some- 
thing beyond  these.  Perhaps  what  we  call  "  personality  "  best 
suggests  my  meaning.  A  man  who  was  merely  and  simply  a 
great  artist,  for  example,  would  hardly,  in  these  days,  be  regarded 
by  the  judicious  as^a  great  man.  The  mere  artist  has  in  him 
too  much  of  the  defenceless  child — is  too  naive,  too  ingenuous. 
It  may  be  true  that,  in  order  to  inherit  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven, 
we  must  become  as  little  children  ;  more  than  that  is  required 
of  those  who  assume  to  govern  the  Earth.  For  the  Earth,  pace 
our  anarchist  friends,  needs  government  still ;  and  is  likely  to 
need  it  for  some  time  to  come. 


AUTHORITIES 


"  Mind  and  Body  " 

"  Physiological  Psychology  " 
"  History  of  Philosophy  "    . 

"  Appearance  and  Reality  " 

"  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty  " 

"  Physiognomy  and  Expression  " 

"  Two  New  Worlds  " 

"  On  Life  after  Death  " 

"  The  Will  to  Believe  "        . 
"  Thus  Spake  Zarathustra  " 

"  Beyond  Good  and  Evil  " 

"  Plato's  Republic  " 

"  The  Bhagavad  Git&  " 
"  Sex  and  Character  " 

"  Pages  de  Stendhal"          . 
"  Grammar  of  Science  " 

"  First  Principles  " 

"  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Herbert 

Spencer " 

"  Science  and  a  Future  Life  "... 

"Caesar" 

"  Historians'  History  of  the  World." 
"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  " 

"  Charlemagne  " 

"  William  the  Silent  "  .         .         .         . 
"  Courtships  of  Queen  Elizabeth  " 

"Drake" 

"  History  of  the  English  People  " 

"  Richelieu  " 

"Cromwell" 

"  Letters  of  Cromwell  " 


A.  BAIN. 

W.  MCDOUGALL. 

SCHWEOLER.    Tr.  by  J.  H. 

STIRLING. 
F.  H.  BRADLEY. 

F.  GALTON. 

P.  MANTEQAZZA. 

E.  E.  FOURNIER  D'ALBE. 

G.  T.  FECHNER.    Tr.  by 
H.  WERNEKKE. 

W.  JAMES. 

F.  NIETZSCHE.    Tr.  by  A. 
TILLE. 

F.  NIETZSCHE.     Tr.  by  H. 

ZlMMERN. 

Tr.  by  J.  LI.  DAVIES  and 
D.  J.  VATIGHAK. 

Tr.  by  A.  BESANT. 

O.  WEININGER.  Author- 
ised Trans. 

MERCURE  DE  FRANCE. 

K.  PEARSON. 

H.  SPENCER. 

W.  H.  HUDSON. 
J.  H.  HYSLOP. 
J.  A.  FROUDE. 

Various  Articles. 
H.  CARLESS  DAVIS. 
F.  HARRISON. 
MARTIN  HUME. 
JULIAN  CORBETT. 
J.  R.  GREEN. 
RICHARD  LODGE. 
F.  HARRISON. 
T.  CARLYLB. 


412 


MAKERS  OF  MAN 


"  The  Puritan  Revolution  " 

"  Life  of  Frederic  in.,  King  of  Prussia  " 

"  Life  of  Nelson  " 

"  Life  of  Nelson  " 

"  Life  of  Nelson  " 

"  Lord  Nelson's  Letters  to  Lady  Hamilton." 

"  Life  of  Napoleon  " 

"Napoleon.     The  Last  Phase  "    . 

"  Napoleon,  King  of  Elba  " 

"  Napoleon  and  the  Fair  Sex  " 

"  Table    Talk    and   Opinions  of    Napoleon 

Bonaparte." 

"  Napoleon's  Russian  Campaign  " 
"  The  French  Revolution  "   . 
"  Abraham  Lincoln  "    . 

"  Life  of  Dante  " 

"  Dante  " 

"  Guelphs  and  Ghibellines  " 

"  Women  of  Florence  " 

"  La  Commedia  di  Dante  Alighieri  " 

"  The  Vision  of  Dante  " 

"  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  " 

"  Leonardo  da  Vinci  "  . 

"  Leonardo  " 

"  Leonard  de  Vinci :  Textes  Choisis  "  . 
"  Life  and  Works  of  Titian  " 
"  Life  and  Times  of  Titian  " 

"  Cervantes  " 

"  Don  Quixote  " 

"  Mozart "....... 

"  Mozart  "     .        . 

"  Life  of  J.  W.  Goethe  " 

"Goethe" 

"  Goethe's  Faust  " 

"  Wilhelm  Meister  " 

"  Outlines  of  German  Literature  " 

"  Representative     Men :     Goethe,     or     the 

Writer " 

"Beethoven" 

"  Beethoven  :  Reminiscences  "     . 

"  Life  of  Scott,  with  Autobiography  "  . 

"  Life  of  J.  M.  W.  Turner  "  . 

"  Gustave  Flaubert,  as  seen  in   his   Works 

and  Correspondence  "    . 


S.  R.  GARDINER. 
J.  TOWERS. 
R.  SOTJTHEY. 
MAHAN. 

C.  BERESFORD  and  H.  W. 
WILSON. 

F.  DE  BOURRIENNE. 

ROSEBERY. 

P.  GRUYER.  Tr. 

F.  MASSON.    Tr. 


L.  TOLSTOY.    Tr. 
T.  CARLYLE. 
C.  G.  LELAND,  etc. 
PAGET  TOYNBEB. 
E.  G.  GARDNER. 

0.  BROWNING. 

1.  DEL  LTTNGO.    Tr. 
P.  TOYNBEE. 

H.  F.  GARY. 
J.  OWEN. 
G.  GRONATI. 

J.  P.  RlCHTER. 

PELADAN. 

CLAUDE  PHILLIPS. 

CROWE  &  CAVALCASELLE. 

H.  E.  WATTS. 

Tr.  by  C.  JARVIS. 

E.  J.  BREAKSPEARE. 

VERNON  LUSHINGTON. 

J.  SIME. 

A.  HAYWARD. 

Tr.  by  A.  SWANWICK. 

Tr.  by  T.  CARLYLE. 

J.  GOSTWIOK. 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

J.  S.  SHEDLOCK. 

L.  NOHL.  Tr.  by  A.  WOOD. 

J.  G.  LOCKHART,  etc. 

W.  THORNBURY. 

J.  C.  TARVER. 


AUTHORITIES 

Salammbo  " G.  FLAUBEBT. 

C.  CHAETRES. 


413 

Tr.  by  J. 


"  Madame  Bovary  "     . 

"  L' Education  Sentimentale  " 

"  Francis  Bacon,  His  Life  and  Philosophy ' 
"  The  Tragedy  of  Sir  Francis  Bacon  " 
"  Novum  Organum  "    . 
"  Life  of  Galileo  " 


"  William  Harvey  " 

"  Eminent  Doctors  " 

"  The  Motion  of  the  Heart  and  Blood  " 

"  The  Growth  of  Truth  "     . 

"Descartes" 

"  The  '  Method,'  '  Meditations,'  and  Selec- 
tions from  the  '  Principles "  of  Des- 
cartes, with  Introductory  Essay  " 

"  Spinoza  :  His  Life  and  Philosophy  " 

"  The  Chief  Works  of  B.  de  Spinoza  "  . 

"  The  Life  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  "  . 

"  Leibniz  " 

"  Leibniz :  Discourse  on  Metaphysics ; 
Correspondence  with  Arnauld,  '  Mon- 
adology  '  "  . 

"Kant" 

"  Religion  and  Philosophy  in  Germany," 
"  Heine's  Prose  Works  " 

"  Kant's  Oitick  of  Pure  Reason  " 

"Hegel" 

"  The  Logic  of  Hegel  "         . 

"  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  History  " 

"  Life  of  Charles  Darwin  "    . 

"  Origin  of  Species  "     . 

New  Testament,  Revised  Version. 

"  Life  of  Jesus  " 

"  Ecce  Homo  " 

"  Jesus  in  Modern  Criticism  " 

"  The  First  Three  Gospels  ". 


G.  FLAUBBBT.    Tr.  by  H. 

BLANCHAMP. 
G.  FLAUBEBT.    Tr.  by  D. 

F.  HANNIGAN. 
J.  NICHOL. 
H.  BAYLEY. 
BACON.     Tr. 
Anon.     Lib.     of     Useful 

Knowledge.       Cf.    also 

Brewster's     "  Life     of 

Newton." 
D'AncY  POWER. 
G.  T.  BETTANY. 
W.  HARVEY.     Tr.  by  R. 

WILLS. 
HARVEIAN  Oration,  1906. 

W.  OSLER. 
J.  P.  MAHAFFY. 


J.  VEITCH. 

F.  POLLOCK. 

Tr.  by  R.  H.  M.  ELWES. 

D.  BREWSTER. 

J.  T.  MERZ. 


Tr.  by  G.  R.  MONTGOMERY. 
W.  WALLACE. 

Ed.  by  H.  ELLIS. 
Tr.  by  H.  HAYWOOD. 

E.  CAIRD. 

Tr.  by  W.  WALLACE. 
Tr.  by  J.  SIBREE,  etc. 

F.  DARWIN. 

C.  DARWIN,  etc. 


E.  RENAN.    Tr. 
J.  SEELEY. 
P.  W.  SCHMIEDEL. 
M.  A.  CANNEY. 
J.  E.  CARPENTER. 


Tr.  by 


414  MAKERS  OF  MAN 

"  Evolution  and  Theology  "         ...    0.   PFLEIDERER.    Tr.   by 

0.  CONE. 
"  A  Short  History  of  Christianity  "       .         .     J.  M.  ROBERTSON. 

"  Jesus  of  Nazareth  " E.  CLODD. 

"  Christianity  and  History  "         ...     A.  HARNACK.     Tr.  by  T. 

B.  SATJNDERS,  etc. 

"  St.  Paul  " E.  RENAN. 

"  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism  "     .        .        .    M.  ARNOLD. 

"  The  Apostles  " E.  RENAN.    Tr.  by  W.  G. 

HUTCHISON. 
"Marcus  Aurelius  " E.  RENAN.     Tr.  by  W.  G. 

HUTCHISON. 

"  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius  "       .         .     Tr.  by  J.  COLLIER. 
"  Memoir  of  St.  Augustine  "  .     J.  BAILLIE. 

<!  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine  "  .         .         .     Tr. 
"  St.  Gregory  the  Great  "     .         .         .         .     ABBOT  SNOW. 
"  The  Life  of  Mahomet  "  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

"The  Koran" Tr. 

"  The  Hero  as  Prophet "  .         .         .     T.  CARLYLE. 

"  Francis  of  Assisi  " A.  M.  STODDART. 

"  Leaders  of  Christian  and  Anti-Christian 

Thought  " E.  RENAN.    Tr.  by  W.  M. 

THOMSON. 
"  The  Little  Flowers  of  St.  Francis  "     .         .     Tr.  by  W.  HEYWOOD. 

"  Life  of  Luther  " JULIUS  KOSTLIN.    Tr. 

"  Emerson  " R.  GARNETT. 

"  Talks  with  Emerson  "        .         .         .         .     C.  J.  WOOBBURY. 

"  The  Works  of  Emerson,"  etc. 

"  Life  of  Ernest  Renan  "      ....    MADAME  J.  DARMESTETER. 

"  Souvenirs  d'Enfance  et  de  Jeunesse  "       .     E.  RENAN.     Tr. 

"  Ernest  Renan  " M.  G.  DUFF. 

N.B. — The  above  list  makes  no  claim  to  completeness,  being  mainly 
confined  to  works  actually  cited  in  the  text. 


INDEX 


ABBOTSFOBD,  Scott's  purchase  of,  123. 

Action,  men  of,  21,  22,  23 ;  energy  of, 
64,  66  ;  physique  of,  65-71 ;  pur- 
pose of,  161-187,  284  ;  not  usually 
fond  of  solitude,  293,  306,  307  ; 
inspired  by  danger,  293-301  ; 
sexual  proclivities  of,  317,  319  ; 
greatness  of,  exemplified,  396-398. 

Aesthetic   Type,   practical   weakness 
of,  23  ;  Goethe  on,  23,  24  ;  fastidi- 
ousness   of,    24  ;  typical    physique  : 
and  physiognomy  of,  71-82  ;  men 
of,  not  weaklings,  72  ;  purpose  of, 
187-208,    284,    285 ;  unworldiness  | 
of,    301  ;  solitude,    and    men    of,  j 
307,    308 ;  sexual    proclivities    of,  j 
317,319;  greatness  of,  exemplified, 
398-401. 

Amina,  mother  of  Mahomet,  60. 

Aristotle,  view  of,  concerning  ego,  13.  i 

Arnold,  M.,  406. 

Art,  versus  Science,  26  ;  affinity  of, 
to  Science,  111,  112. 

Augustine,  see  Saint  Augustine. 

Aurelia,  mother  of  Caesar,  49,  325. 

Bacon,    Lord    Francis,    insanity    of  . 
mother  of,   56  ;    physiognomy   of,  ! 
89  ;  weak   health   of,   90  ;  natural  J 
vocation   of,    105,    106,    125-127 ;  j 
public  activities  of,  106  ;  power  of,  ] 
as  orator,  125  ;  philanthropic  aims 
of,  105  ;  question  of  his  collabora-  j 
tion  with  Shakespeare,    126,   127 ; 
Tempus  Partus  Maximus  of,  209  ; 
as  reformer,   209  ;  offends   Queen, 
209 ;     love    of    display    of,    210  ; 
philosophical  aim  of,  210  ;  central  j 
purpose  of,  211  ;  need  of  seclusion 
of.  309  ;  cause  of  venality  of,  367  ;  j 
enslaved    by    Buckingham,    367 :  [ 
ingratitude    of,    368 ;  achievement 
of,  401,  402. 

Ballantyne,  Jas.,  76. 

Bayley,  Harold,  cited  anent  Bacon 
and  Shakespeare,  126,  127. 


Beatrice  Portinari,  118. 

Beethoven,  Ludwig  von,  spiritual 
exaltation  of,  35 ;  physique  of, 
72,  80  ;  always  in  love,  80,  81,  200, 
346,  347  ;  deafness  of,  81  ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  112  ;  purpose  of, 
200-202  ;  sense  of  dignity  of,  200  ; 
effects  of  deafness  of,  on  his  art, 
201  ;  misery  of,  201  ;  fifth  sym- 
phony of,  200,  201  ;  isolation  of, 
201,  347,  348;  views  of,  on 
marriage,  347 ;  his  heart  broken 
by  conduct  of  nephew,  348 ; 
greatness  of,  400. 

Bertha,  mother  of  Charlemagne,  50. 

Biography,  scientific  function  of,  46. 

Body,  the,  as  organised  experience, 
2,  5,  16,  17. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  on  relation  of  body 
and  soul,  16,  17. 

Brain,  the,  an  external  organ,  4 ; 
development  of  associational  arcs 
of,  10  ;  of  Scott,  76. 

Cadijah,  first  wife  of  Mahomet,  146  ; 
her  death,  261  ;  mentioned,  344. 

Caesar,  Cains  Julius,  ethical  bias  of,  31 ; 
lineage  of,  49  ;  physique  of,  65,  66  ; 
natural  vocation  of,  105,  114-116  ; 
literary  work  of,  114,  115  ;  style 
of,  115;  no  time-server,  1 15  ;  pur- 
pose of,  161-163 ;  his  political 
marriage,  161  ;  reticence  of,  162 ; 
magnanimity  of,  163  ;  resourceful- 
ness of,  293,  294;  love-affairs  of, 
327,  328  ;  and  Cleopatra,  327,  328  ; 
his  great  crime,  353,  354 ;  genius 
of,  396. 

Carlyle,  Thos.,  theory  of,  respecting 
unconsciousness  of  genius,  153. 

Causation,  regarded  by  Leibnitz  as 
illusion,  13,  384;  impact  theory  of, 
287  ;  true  order  of,  387. 

Cervantes,  Miguel  de,  his  love  of 
action,  34,  35 ;  physique  of,  72 ; 
physiognomy  of,  76 ;  charm  of, 


4'S 


416 


INDEX 


76,  136  ;  courage  of,  77,  135,  136, 
301,  302  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105, 
135-137;  slavery  of,  136,  194; 
as  dramatist,  136,  195  ;  purpose  of, 
194-196;  tolerance  of,  194;  his 
Numancia,  195  ;  as  collector,  195  ; 
conception  of  Don  Quixote,  195 ; 
the  second  part  of  Don  Quixote, 
196  ;  greatness  of,  399. 

Character,  acquired,  inheritance  of,  3. 

Charlemagne,  ethical  bias,  31,  32  ; 
friends  of,  32  ;  mother  of,  49,  50  ; 
father  of,  59  ;  physical  strength  of, 
66  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105,  116  ; 
intellectual  pursuits  of,  116;  pur- 
pose of,  163-165;  his  co-operation 
with  the  Papacy,  163 ;  task  of, 
163 ;  encourages  Church  reform, 
164,  165  ;  sexual  relations  of,  328- 
330  ;  moral  deterioration  of,  329  ; 
a  free-lover,  330  ;  his  great  crime, 
354,  355  ;  achievement  of,  396. 

Chivalry,  discussed,  177,  178. 

Classification  of  types,  limitations  of, 
39,  45. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  theory  of,  concerning 
genius,  25. 

Consciousness,  generation  of,  6. 

Conversion,  physiological  basis  of, 
200,  285,  311,  312. 

Crime,  universality  of,  351-353 ; 
constraint  to,  352 ;  implied  by 
limitation,  352,  353  ;  great  men  in 
relation  to,  351-378. 

Criticism,  Higher,  the,  anticipated  by 
Spinoza,  219 ;  main  triumph  of, 
239,  240. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  22 ;  disinterested 
motives  of,  32  ;  his  mother,  50,  51, 
323 ;  his  lather,  51  ;  lineage  of, 
51  ;  physique  of,  65,  67 ;  hypo- 
chondriacal  tendency  of,  67 ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  134,  135  ;  visions 
of,  134  ;  his  private  life,  134  ;  pur- 
pose of,  170^173  ;  refuses  knight- 
hood, 170 ;  political  d6but  of, 
171  ;  motive  of,  171,  172 :  and 
the  "new  model,"  171,  172;  his 
relations  with  Charles  I.,  172,  359, 
with  Levellers,  172,  173  ;  growing 
tolerance  of,  173  ;  refuses  crown, 
173  ;  military  genius  of,  295,  296  ; 
the  Irish  crime  of,  359,  360;  his 
superiority  to  military  colleagues, 
396. 

Danger,  men  of  action  in  relation  to, 
293-301  ;  men  of  thought  in  re- 


lation to,  302 ;  ethico-religious  type 
and, 303-306. 

Dante  Alighieri,  practical  bias  of,  33  ; 
physique  of,  72 ;  stature  and 
physiognomy  of,  77,  78  ;  lustfulness 
of,  78,  79,  336,  337  ;  death-mask 
of,  79  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105, 
118,  119;  political  ambition  of, 
106,  118,  119;  and  Beatrice,  118, 
335,336;  Priorateof,  119  ;  purpose 
of,  187-191 ;  exile  of,  187,  188 ;  his 
Vita  Nuova,  187,  188  ;  conception 
of  his  Commedia,  189,  190 ;  as 
precursor  of  the  Reformation,  190  ; 
date  of  conversion  of,  191  ;  recluse 
habit  of,  308 ;  sexual  history, 
335-337  ;  marriage  of,  336  ;  great- 
ness  and  significance  of,  398. 

D'Arcy  Power  cited,  27,  90. 

Darwin,  Charles,  his  love  of  music, 
27,  142  ;  family  history  of,  58,  59  ; 
physique  of,  83  ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105,  142,  143 ;  physiognomy 
and  health  of,  88,  89  ;  his  power  of 
observation,  142,  143 ;  limitations 
of,  142  ;  his  love  of  literature  and 
shooting,  143  ;  as  medical  stud  *? 
143  ;  destined  for  the  Church,  l4b  ; 
meets  Prof.  Henslow,  143,  234 ; 
purpose  of,  234-239  ;  influence  of 
Humboldt  and  Herschel  upon, 
234 ;  geological  tour  of,  235 ; 
voyage  on  the  Beagle  determines 
his  career,  235  ;  dawn  and  growth 
of  his  interest  in  evolution,  235, 
236 ;  natural  selection,  the  key 
to  evolutionary  theory  of,  236,  237  ; 
influence  of  Malthus  upon,  237  ;  his 
law  of  divergence,  237,  238 ;  his 
work  on  barnacles,  238  ;  writes  the 
Origin,  238 ;  misgivings  of,  con- 
cerning own  theory,  239  ;  courage 
of,  302  ;  and  Hegel,  406. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  59. 

Descartes,  Rene,  on  pineal  gland,  6  ; 
a  vision  of,  27 ;  physical  weak- 
ness of,  83,  90 ;  fundamentally 
a  mathematician,  90  ;  mother  of, 
consumptive,  90 ;  natural  voca- 
tion of,  105,  113,  114;  logical 
rules  of,  114  ;  purpose  of,  215,  216  ; 
the  intellectual  crisis  of,  215 ; 
desires  to  extend  mathematical 
method  to  natural  science,  215, 
216 ;  fundamental  conception  of, 
216  ;  deductive  method  of,  216  ;  his 
timidity,  218 ;  compared  with 
Spinoza,  218,  219 ;  illegitimate 


INDEX 


417 


daughter  of,  318  ;  achievement  of, 
403. 

Don  Quixote,  publication  of  the 
first  part  of,  136 ;  the  original  of, 
195 ;  the  second  part  of,  196 ; 
travesty  of  second  part  of,  by 
Lope  de  Vega,  196. 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  32  ;  physique  of, 
65  ;  physiognomy  of,  69  ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  107  ;  purpose  of, 
167,  168  ;  his  hatred  of  Spam,  167, 
168 ;  his  knight-errantry,  168 ; 
great  hour  of,  294,  295  ;  his  com- 
plicity in  a  massacre,  355 ;  execu- 
tion of  Doughty  by,  355,  356 ; 
awe  inspired  by,  396,  397. 

Ego,  dawn  of  the,  9 ;  dynamic 
apriorism  of,  11  ;  leading  views  of 
philosophers  concerning,  12—17 ; 
three  main  conceptions  of,  17-19. 

Ellis,  Havelock,  view  of,  con- 
cerning stature  of  men  of  genius, 
77. 

/Wmerson,  R.  W.,  versatility  of,  44  ; 
>  family  history  of,  61,  62  ;  physique 

' "  'and  physiognomy  of,  93  ;  personal 
magnetism  of,  93 ;  natural  voca- 
tion of,  106,  130,  131  ;  poetic  by- 
activity  of,  106  ;  aloofness  of,  130  ; 
purpose  of,  275-279 ;  his  choice 
of  the  ministry,  275  ;  diffidence  of, 
275  ;  his  breach  with  congregation, 
276,  276  ;  was  he  a  Theist  T  276  ; 
and  Carlyle,  276  ;  publishes  Nature, 
277 ;  method  of,  277 ;  contem- 
poraries of,  278 ;  tolerance  of, 
278  ;  eulogises  war,  279  ;  the  true, 
279 ;  his  love  of  solitude,  315 ; 
greatness  of,  as  compared  with 
Whitman,  408,  409. 

Environment  versus  genius,  20,  101, 
147. 

Ethico-religious  type,  defined,  29,  30  ; 
its  function,  39,  40  ;  supremacy  of, 
40  ;  physical  characteristics  of,  91- 
97 ;  life-history  of  its  members 
involved  in  that  of  their  nation  and 
age,  147  ;  purpose  of  men  of,  239- 
283,  285  ;  fortitude  demanded  of, 
303  ;  sense  of  guilt  of  members  of, 
309  ;  self -conquest  of  men  of,  311, 
312 ;  sexual  proclivities  of,  317, 
319  ;  power  of,  exemplified,  406- 
409. 

Eugenics,  problem  of,  63 ;  possible 
occult  significance  of,  387,  388. 

Evolution,  starting-point  of,  3. 
27 


Fabricius,  relation 
discovery,  213,  214. 

Families  of  parents  of  great  men,  46, 
47 ;  place  of  great  men  in,  47  ; 
comparison  of  types  in  regard  to, 
48.  . 

Fechner,  Theodor,  hypothesis  of, 
concerning  posthumous  existence, 
392,  393  ;  on  insight  of  great  men, 
396 ;  mentioned,  405. 

Fichte,  his  theory  of  the  ego,  14. 

Flaubert,  Gustave,  fidelity  of,  to 
fact,  37,  38 ;  his  lack  of  ambition, 
38  ;  physique  of,  72  ;  physiognomy 
and  temperament  of,  74,  75 ; 
hystero-epilepsy  and  fear  of  life  of, 
75,  206  ;  comparative  celibacy  of, 
75,  207,  317,  318  ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105,  112,  113;  purpose  of, 
205-208;  his  disgust  with  legal 
study,  205,  206 ;  influence  of  his 
father  upon,  206;  his  contempt 
for  Utopias,  207 ;  his  hatred  of 
the  bourgeoisie,  208  ;  his  intrigue 
with  a  married  woman,  318 ; 
greatness  of,  401. 

Flechsig,  Prof.,  cited,  10. 

Francis  d'Assisi,  see  Saint  Francis 
d'Assisi. 

Frederick  the  Great,  32 ;  family 
history  of,  58  ;  physique  of,  66  ; 
physiognomy  of,  67,  68  ;  premature 
senility  of,  68 ;  sexual  deficiency  of, 
68,  69  ;  versatility  of,  104 ;  his 
desire  of  admiration,  104,  152 ; 
natural  vocation  of,  105,  150-153  ; 
his  military  education,  150 ;  his 
practice  of  poetry  and  music,  160  ; 
his  flight  from  his  father's  tyranny, 
150  ;  execution  of  his  friend  Katte, 
150,  175  ;  marriage  of,  150  ;  corre- 
sponds with  Voltaire,  150 ;  dawn  of 
his  ambition,  150,  151  ;  seizes 
Herstal  and  Hermal,  151  ;  invades 
Silesia,  152  ;  motive  of,  152 ;  pur- 
pose of,  173-176 ;  his  hatred  of 
his  father,  175  ;  positive  phase  of 
bis  purpose,  176  ;  "  religion  "  of, 
177  ;  military  genius  of,  296,  297  ; 
his  relations  to  women,  317,  318  ; 
criminality  of,  360-363  ;  his  viola- 
tion of  pledges,  361,  362;  his 
cruel  treatment  of  Baron  Trenck, 
362  ;  partition  of  Poland  by,  363  ; 
greatness  of,  396. 

!  Galileo  Galilei,  dramatic  sense  of,  27 ; 
parents  of,  59  ;  phyaique  of,  53, 54  ; 


4i8 


INDEX 


physiognomy  and  health  of,  84 ; 
natural  vocation  of,  105,  137,  138  ; 
aesthetic  pursuits  of,  137 ;  discovery 
of  pendulum  by,  137,  211  ;  deserts 
medicine  for  mathematics,  137  ; 
purpose  of,  211-213  ;  his  indebted- 
ness to  Leonardo,  211 ;  a  convert 
to  Copernican  theory,  211  ;  in- 
curs enmity  of  Jesuits,  211,  212; 
construction  of  first  telescope  by, 
212 ;  astronomical  discoveries  of, 
212 ;  rebukes  Kepler's  apriorism, 
212,  213 ;  impetuosity  of,  302 ; 
greatness  of,  402,  403. 

Galton,  Law  of,  62 ;  his  investiga- 
tion of  life-histories  of  twins,  101, 
102 ;  on  solitary  habit  of  the  insane, 
291,  292  ;  on  gregarious  habit  of 
commonplace  individuals,  292. 

Genius,  versus  environment,  20,  100, 
101,  147 ;  Coleridge  on,  25 ;  and 
insanity,  56,  57,  60,  93 ;  and 
sterility,  60, 321  ;  not  a  disease,  63  ; 
cost  of,  93 ;  eye  of,  its  emana- 
tions, 99 ;  face  of  the  man  of,  99, 
100  ;  men  of,  two  main  classes,  124, 
125  ;  Carlyle's  theory  of,  refuted, 
153 ;  emotional  needs  and  dread 
of  responsibility  of  men  of,  347  ; 
ruthlessness  of,  369 ;  finality  in 
works  of,  369,  370 ;  cost  of  its 
victories,  395  ;  greatness  of,  395  ; 
defined,  395 ;  relation  of,  to  epoch, 
395,  396  ;  power  of  men  of,  396- 
409. 

Goethe,  J.  W.,  on  artists,  23,  24  ; 
susceptibility  of,  26 ;  complexity 
of,  35  ;  parents  of,  52, 53  ;  physique 
and  physiognomy  of,  72,  73,  74  ; 
natural  vocation  of,  105,  119-121  ; 
his  attempts  at  drawing,  106,  120  ; 
versatility  of,  119  ;  his  resemblance 
to  Scott,  120  ;  official  industry  of, 
121 ;  as  mineralogist,  121 ;  scientific 
discovery  of  premaxilla  by,  121  ; 
work  of,  on  metamorphosis  of 
plants,  121  ;  his  theory  of  colour, 
121  ;  Napoleon  on,  153  ;  on  con- 
scious aims,  159,  160 ;  purpose  of, 
197-200 ;  and  the  puppet  show, 
197  ;  and  Gretchen,  197,  198,  341  ; 
influenced  by  Shakespeare,  198 ; 
begins  Faust,  198  ;  his  Sorrows  of 
Werther,  199;  influenced  by  Spinoza, 
199  ;  begins  to  discipline  himself, 
199  ;  real  aim  of,  200  ;  love-affairs 
of,  340-344 ;  sentimentality  of, 
340,  341 ;  sexual  precocity  of,  341  ; 


and  Frederica  Brion,  342 :  and 
Charlotte,  342,  343  ;  and  Lili,  343  ; 
captured  by  Christiane,  344 ; 
significance  of  his  personality  and 
work,  399,  400. 

Gordianus,  55. 

Great  Men,  insanity  among  mothers 
of,  56,  57  ;  constitutional  features 
of,  62,  63  ;  physical  characteristics 
of  the  several  types  of,  97,  98  ; 
unique  impression  made  by,  98  ; 
cause  of  impression  made  by,  99, 
100 ;  stars  of,  109 ;  two  great 
classes  of,  124,  125 ;  tentative 
efforts  of,  132  ;  limitations  of,  142  ; 
their  relations  to  women,  316-350; 
fickleness  of,  326,  327  ;  temptations 
of,  351 ;  in  relation  to  crime,  351- 
378 ;  power  of,  exemplified,  396-409. 

Greatness,  four  main  types  of,  21  ; 
test  of,  266 ;  interdependence  of 
qualities  and  defects  of,  377  ;  new 
type  of,  410. 

Gregory,  see  Saint  Gregory  the  Great. 

Habit,  newly  established,  2 ;  in- 
heritance of,  3. 

Hseckel,  and  human  evolution,  3 ; 
and  unconscious  memory,  4. 

Hanks,  Nancy,  mother  of  Lincoln,  67. 

Harvey,  William,  unworldliness  of, 
39 ;  physique  of,  83,  88 ;  limita- 
tions of  his  genius,  87,  213 ; 
personal  traits  of,  88 ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  113  ;  culture  of, 
113;  purpose  of,  213-216;  his 
association  with  Fabricius,  213, 
214 ;  his  dissections  and  vivi- 
sections, 214,  215,  368,  369;  his 
Lumleian  lectures,  215 ;  imprudence 
of,  302 ;  his  love  of  solitude, 
309,  310  ;  callousness  of,  towards 
animals,  368,  369  ;  importance  of 
his  work,  403. 

Hedonic  selection,  law  of,  3,  104,  105. 

Hegel,  G.  W.  F.,  on  man  as  part  of 
nature,  8  ;  his  theory  of  the  ego, 
14 ;  as  poet,  27,  140 ;  family 
history  of,  59 ;  physique  of,  83. 
85  ;  his  physiognomy  and  personal 
traits,  85,  86  ;  his  death  accidental, 
80  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105,  140, 
141  ;  compared  with  Kant,  140, 
231;  his  thirst  for  general  know- 
ledge, 140 ;  as  freethinker  and 
Jacobin,  140,  231  ;  his  "  voyage  of 
discovery,"  141  ;  his  relations  with 
Fichte  and  Schelling,  141 ;  Logic 


INDEX 


419 


of,  conceived,  141  ;  purpose  of, 
231-234  ;  breaks  with  Schelling, 
231  ;  influenced  by  Hellenic  ideal, 
231,  232 ;  revolutionary  purport 
of  his  Logic,  232,  233  ;  completion 
of  his  Logic,  233  ;  his  relation  to 
Christianity,  233  ;  self -concentra- 
tion of,  311  ;  his  power  shown  in 
modern  Germany,  405,  406. 

Heredity,  importance  of,  8  ;  Pearson 
on,  9 ;  Galton's  Law  of,  9 ; 
Mendel's  Law  of,  10. 

Hertzka,  Theodor,  on  the  social 
origin  of  thought,  396. 

Individuality    as  a  centre  of  force, 
11  ;      mechanical     view    of,     11  ; 
substantial  nature   of,    380 ;    and 
heredity,     380,     381,     384- 386  ;| 
view  of  Leibnitz  concerning,  382-  I 
384 ;      permanency,      385,     386 ;  | 
noumenal,     386,     387    ;     specific 
universality  of,  388,  389  ;  a  parable 
of,     389,     390 ;      substratum     of, 
390,    391  :     Plato    on    choice    of 
destiny  of,  391,   392  ;    power  of, 
393-^10. 

Infant  Prodigies,  103. 

Instinct,  definition  of,  7  ;  described, 
7,  8  ;  constructive,  112. 

Intellectual  type,  the,  compared 
with  aesthetic,  26,  27,  28,  34 ; 
indifference  of,  to  success,  39 ; 
purpose  of  men  of,  209-239,  285  ; 
courage  of  men  of,  302 ;  sexual 
proclivities  of,  317,  319. 

Inventor,  the,  not  a  primary  type,  31. 

Jesus,  reasons  for  inclusion  of,  40  ; 
historicity  of,  40,  41,  42,  239 ; 
his  ignorance  of  worldly  affairs, 
42  ;  question  of  the  physiognomy 
of,  92;  natural  vocation  of,  105- 
107 ;  purpose  of,  239-247 ;  in- 
dications of  development  of,  239, 
240 ;  literary  personality  of,  a 
composite  product,  240,  241  ; 
social  environment  of,  241  ; 
influence  upon,  of  Judas  the 
Goulonite,  Hillel,  Isaiah,  and 
the  Book  of  Daniel,  241,  242  ;  his 
conception  of  the  "  Kingdom," 
242  ;  influence  of  John  the  Baptist 
upon,  243  ;  his  fast  in  the  desert, 
243,  244 ;  Galilean  mission  of, 
244 ;  acceptance  of  Messianic 
role  by,  244,  245 ;  his  conflict 
with  Judaism,  245,  246;  his 


change  of  tone,  246  ;  purport  of 
life  and  work  of,  247  :  Kang  Yu 
Wei  on  the  courage  of,  303  ;  and 
the  Christ  ideal,  370,  406;  ill 
effects  of  the  doctrine  of,  371  ; 
his  attitude  towards  the  Scribes 
and  Pharisees,  371  ;  sublime  role 
of,  406. 

Kant,  Immanuel,  his  theory  of  the 
ego,  14 ;  Scots  descent  of,  59 ; 
physique  of,  83 ;  a  pygmy,  90, 
91  ;  celibacy  of,  a  sore  subject, 
91  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105,  139, 
140 ;  scrappy  reading  of,  139 ; 
encyclopaedic  phase  of,  139,  229  ; 
conception  of  nis  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason,  139,  140 :  purpose  of, 
228-231  ;  mental  crisis  of,  229  ; 
influenced  by  Hume,  229 ;  his 
Critique  of  Practical  Reason,  230  ; 
compared  with  Hegel,  231  ;  his 
courage  under  poverty,  302  ; 
courage  fails  him  when  censured 
by  Court,  302 ;  his  hour  for 
meditation,  310  ;  negative  versua 
positive  effect  of  his  work,  405. 

Lavater  on  the  emanations  of  the 
eye  of  genius,  99. 

Leibnitz,  Gottfried  Wilhelm,  view  of, 
concerning  ego,  13 ;  parents  of, 
53 ;  conciliatory  temper  of,  53, 
128  ;  physique  of,  83-85  ;  physiog- 
nomy of,  85 ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105,  128  ;  purpose  of,  225-228  ; 
unity  of  his  airo  in  multiplicity  of 
interests,  225 ;  influenced  by 
Bacon,  226 ;  early  works  of, 
226 ;  joins  Rosicrucians,  226 ; 
meets  Huygens,  227 ;  discovers 
calculus,  227 ;  his  relations  to 
Descartes  and  Spinoza,  228,  229  ; 
his  view  concerning  individuality, 
382-384  ;  importance  of  his  work, 
404,  405. 

Leland,  C.  G.,  33. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  versatility  of, 
34,  104,  155 ;  physical  traits  of, 
72,  73  ;  unconventionally  of,  73  ; 
natural  vocation  of,  105,  153-155  ; 
his  tendency  from  art  towards 
science,  106,  154.  155,  192;  his 
consciousness  of  his  own  powers. 
153,  154;  artistic  and  scientific 
life  of,  at  Milan,  154;  completes 
"Last  Snpper"  for  the  Duke, 
154 ;  his  Treatise  on  Painting, 


420 


INDEX 


154  ;  his  anticipations  of  science, 
155 ;  purpose  of,  191-193 ;  his 
intellectual  curiosity,  191 ;  illustra- 
tion of  method  of,  191,  192  ;  his 
superiority  to  ambition,  192,  193  ; 
asexuality  of,  345,  346  ;  greatness 
of,  398,  399. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  33  ;  parents  of, 
57  ;  exceptional  strength  of,  66  ; 
physiognomy  of,  66 ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  109,  110;  self- 
reliance  of,  110  ;  purpose  of,  184- 
187 ;  as  bow-hand,  184 ;  mental 
alienation  of,  184,  185,  307  ;  his 
anti-slavery  debut,  185  ;  and  the 
Kansas  -  Nebraska  Bill,  187  ; 
elected  President,  187 ;  his  mis- 
givings as  to  his  task,  187  ;  para- 
mount object  of,  300  ;  greatness 
of,  397,  398. 

Longevity,  types  compared  as  regards, 
48,  49  ;  supremacy  of  intellectuals 
in  respect  of,  48,  49. 

Luther,  Martin,  masterful  temper 
of,  43 ;  family  history  of,  60, 
61  ;  hallucinations  of,  93,  315  ; 
uhysique,  health,  personality  of, 
93-95 ;  as  musician,  106,  155, 
157 ;  his  brutal  treatment  at 
school,  155 ;  promise  of,  155 ; 
superstitious  fears  of,  156  ;  enters 
convent,  156  ;  influenced  by  von 
Staupitz,  156 ;  hymns  of,  157 ; 
purpose  of,  270-275 ;  germ  of 
doctrine  of,  271  ;  the  national  and 
economic  situation  and,  271,  272  : 
Tetzel  and,  272  ;  the  "  Theses  " 
of,  272 ;  development  of  his 
destructive  programme,  273  ; 
constructive  task  of,  274  ;  courage 
of,  in  marrying,  274  ;  courage  of, 
at  Augsburg  and  Worms,  305,  306  ; 
deterioration  of,  306  ;  abstraction 
of,  315  ;  condones  persecution  of 
Anabaptists,  376 ;  intolerance  of, 
376 ;  his  harshness  towards 
peasants,  376,  377. 

McDougall,  W.,  on  volition,  11,  12. 

Madonna  Pica,  55 ;  devoutness  of, 
56. 

Mahomet,  masterful  temper  of,  43  ; 
family  history  of,  59 ;  physique 
and  personality  of,  93,  94  ;  trances 
of,  94,  147,  260  ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105,  106-148;  illiteracy  of, 
146  ;  learns  from  pilgrims,  146  ; 
bis  contact  with  Christianity,  146  ; 


first  wife  of,  146,  326 ;  critical 
year  of,  146  ;  solitary  meditations 
of,  147,  260,  313  ;  purpose  of,  259- 
264 ;  his  vision  of  Gabriel,  260,  313  ; 
doctrinal  views  of,  260,  261  ; 
persecution  of,  261 ;  death  of 
first  wife  of,  261  ;  celestial  vision 
of,  262  ;  called  to  Medina,  262  ; 
his  appeal  to  force,  262,  263  ; 
growing  [power  of,  263 ;  his 
triumphal  return  to  Mecca,  263, 
264 ;  humility  of,  264 ;  courage 
of,  304  ;  his  vision  of  genii,  313  ; 
sexual  relations  of,  317,  344,  355  ; 
his  fidelity  to  Cadijah,  344  ;  his 
hostility  to  Jews,  374,  375  ;  his 
responsibility  for  massacre  of  the 
Koraidites,  375 ;  special  "  re- 
velations "  of,  375 ;  sanity  of, 
407. 

Mantegazza  on  physiognomy  of 
genius,  99,  100. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  scrupulosity  of, 
43,  252  ;  ill-health  of,  91  ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  128,  129 ;  his 
enforced  activity,  106 ;  ;  not  a 
failure,  128,  129';  purpose  of,  249- 
252  ;  influence  upon,  of  his  mother, 
249,  of  Antoninus,  249,  250, 
of  the  Stoics,  250,  of  Pronto  and 
Junius  Rusticus,  251,  of  Epictetus, 
251  ;  as  persecutor,  372,  373 ; 
significance  of  his  career,  407. 

Marriage,  preconceptions  concerning, 
319-321  ;  its  effects  upon  the 
work  of  great  men,  322-326  ;  a 
field  of  battle,  317,  322,  323  ; 
advantages  of  monogamous,  348, 
349 ;  a  natural  state  ?  349 ; 
Meredith  on,  349,  350. 

Maternal  element,  predominance  of, 
51,  52  ;  in  case  of  St.  Augustine, 
53 ;  in  case  of  St.  Francis,  55  ; 
in  general,  62,  63. 

Mathematics,  compared  with  music, 
.90;  Mozart  and,  111. 

Maturity,  early  and  late,  of  several 
types,  132. 

Memory,  theory  of  unconscious,  3, 
4  ;  and  instinct,  7. 

Mendel,  law  of  inheritance  of,  10. 

Meredith,  G.,  25 ;  on  homage  to 
woman,  349,  350. 

Monica,  mother  of  Augustine,  54, 
325. 

Mothers  of  great  men,  insanity 
among,  56 ;  their  share  in  life 
work  of  sons,  325,  326. 


INDEX 


421 


Mozart,  Wolfgang  Amadeus,  35 ; 
parents  of,  52  ;  tubercular  taint 
of,  52,  81  ;  physique  of,  72,  81  ; 
physiognomy  of,  81,  82  ;  melan- 
choly of,  82  ;  natural  vocation  of, 
105,  111;  precocity  of,  111; 
fleeting  taste  of,  for  mathematics  ; 
purpose  of,  196,  197 ;  Nietzsche 
on,  196 ;  his  tragic  phase,  196, 
197 ;  Quixotism  of,  301  ;  his 
power  of  self-concentration,  307  ; 
supremacy  of,  399. 

Music  and  mathematics,  90  ;  inborn 
capacity  for,  102,  103. 

Napoleon  Bonaparte,  a  typical 
man  of  action,  33 ;  parents  of, 
51,  325  ;  physique  of.  65 ;  physiog- 
nomy of,  69,  70  ;  immense  energy 
of,  69  ;  charm  and  popularity  of, 
70  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105,  108, 
109 ;  star  of,  109 ;  on  Goethe,  153  ; 
purpose  of,  179-184 ;  favourite 
books  of  boyhood  of,  180  ;  Italian 
campaign  of,  181  ;  breaking  the 
rules,  181  ;  his  Oriental  dreams, 
182 ;  "  conversion "  of,  182  ; 
constructive  work  of,  182,  183 ; 
his  relation  to  the  Revolution, 
183  ;  objective  of,  183  ;  bravery 
of,  299,  300 ;  recluse  years  of, 
306,  307  ;  sexual  relations  of, 
330-335;  and  Josephine,  330- 
334 ;  first  love  of,  330 ;  and 
Eleonore,  332 ;  generosity  of, 
332,  334 ;  and  Marie  Walewska, 
333  ;  divorce  of,  333,  334  ;  and 
Marie  Louise,  334  ;  orders  execu- 
tion of  4000  prisoners,  365 ; 
unjust  banishments  by,  366  ;  his 
judicial  murder  of  Due  d'Enghien, 
366  ;  Berlin  decree  of,  367  ;  gutter 
diplomacy  of,  367 ;  greatness  of, 
397. 

Nelson,  Horatio    Lord,    unique  tem- 
perament of,  33;    physical    weak- 
ness  of,    65;    constitution   of,   70; 
charm   of,   70,   71 ;    natural    voca- 
tion, of,  105,  107,  108;    Quixotism 
of,    108;      purpose    of,    176-179; 
chivalry  of,  177,  178  ;   his  craving 
for     distinction.     178 ;      enforce- 
ment    of     Navigation    Acts    pre- 
judices    his     career,     178,     179 ;  | 
patriotism  of,  179  ;    born  to  excel,  [ 
179  ;   his  craving  for  danger,  297- 
299 ;      insubordination     of,     297,  ' 
298 ;     marital    relations    of,    324, 


326 ;  and  Lady  Hamilton,  324, 
325,  363,  364;  his  precipitate 
execution  of  Caracciolo,  364  ;  his 
treatment  of  revolutionists,  364  ; 
his  triumph  over  difficulties,  397. 
'  Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  as  artist,  27  ; 
insanity  of,  58,  86,  87  ;  physique 
of,  83,  86 ;  physiognomy  and 
health  of,  86,  87  ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105,  138,  139 ;  constructive 
bent  of,  138 ;  as  poet,  138 ;  as 
farmer,  138  ;  tests  astrology,  138, 
221  ;  his  investigation  of  prophetic 
works,  138  ;  purpose  of,  220-224  ; 
central  interest  of,  220 ;  as 
alchemist,  221  ;  mathematical 
facility  of,  221  ;  discovers  method 
of  "  fluxions,"  221  ;  his  hatred 
of  controversy,  222 ;  his  theory 
of  gravitation  and  its  precursors, 
222,  223  ;  absent-mindedness  of, 
310. 

Nietzsche,  Friedrich,  cited,  152 : 
<?  on  Frederick  the  Great's  treatment 
i,by  his  father,  152,  153,  173,  174  ; 
*'•  on  Mozart,  196 ;  on  the  perils  of 
'•$?  the  philosopher,  228 ;  on  the 
':  problem  of  man  and  woman,  316, 

319,  320  ;   mentioned,  409,  410. 
Nucleus  of  protozoon,  the,  a  central 
organ  of  psychic  unity,  5. 

Parents  of  great  men,  46. 

Paul,  see  Saint  Paul. 

Pepin  the  Short,  50. 

Perception,  external  reference  of,  4. 

Philosophy,  its  relation  to  science, 
28  ;  to  art,  59. 

Plato,  view  of,  concerning  the  ego, 
12,  13  ;  on  the  soul's  choice  of 
destiny,  391,  392. 

Plotinus,  view  of,  concerning  the 
ego,  13. 

Protozoon,  psychology  of,  3,  4,  5. 

Psychic  research,  17. 

Psychic  unity  of  cells,  5. 

Psychology,  the,  of  protozoon,  3 ; 
versus  physics,  Fournier  d'Albe  on. 
379,  390. 

Purpose,  conscious  versus  empirical 
discovery  of,  141,  142,  160; 
natural  history  of,  159-290  ;  signi- 
ficance of,  159  ;  Goethe  on,  159, 
160 ;  dawn  of,  160 ;  growth  of, 
161 ;  of  men  of  action,  161-187  ; 
of  aesthetic  type,  187-208;  of 
intellectual  type,  209-239;  of 
ethico-religious  type,  239-283 ; 


422 


INDEX 


recapitulation     concerning,     283-   j 
290  ;    negative  and  positive,   170,  ! 
287,  288  ;    concentrative  and  dis-  I 
persive,    225 ;     formal    and    sub-  , 
stantial,  284,  285  ;  mimetic  factor 
of,    286 ;     opportunity   and,    286  ; 
typical     development     of,     three 
stages  in,  288  :    instinctive  stage, 

289  ;     formative  stage,   289,   290  ; 
mature    stage,    290 ;     decline    of, 

290  ;   intrinsicality  of,  394. 

Reid,  Weismann  and,  2. 

Reincarnation,  theory  of,  103. 

Renan,  Ernest,  complexity  of,  44 ; 
beauty  of  style  of,  45  ;  parents  of, 
61  ;  on  physiognomy  of  Jesus,  92  ; 
suffered  from  neuralgia,  93 ; 
physique  and  personality  of,  93, 
95  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105,  148, 
149 ;  clerical  education  of,  148, 
149 ;  introduced  to  philosophy, 
149  ;  influence  of  Henriette  Renan 
upon,  149 ;  vacillation  of,  149 ; 
"  veritafem  dilexi"  149  ;  purpose 
of,  279-283 ;  a  modern  type, 
279  ;  works  of,  281  ;  visits  Pales- 
tine, 281  ;  Vie  de  Jesus  of,  281, 
282  ;  deprived  of  professorial 
chair,  282,  283  ;  as  conservator  of 
religion,  283,  409 ;  on  St.  Paul, 
406  ;  greatness  of,  409. 

Richelieu,  Cardinal  Armand  Jean, 
22  ;  physical  disabilities  of,  65  ; 
tubercular  tendency  of,  71  ;  charm 
of,  71  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105, 
116-118 ;  literary  ambition  of, 
106,  117,  118 ;  purpose  of,  168- 
170 ;  incubation  period  of  his 
genius,  169 ;  his  choice  of  the 
weaker  side,  169  ;  ruling  sentiments 
of,  170 ;  .  presence  of  mind  of, 
295 ;  ruthlessness  of,  357 ;  his 
unjust  treatment  of  Grandier,  357, 
358 ;  his  neglect  of  internal 
abuses,  358,  359  ;  achievements  of, 
396. 
Ruskin,  J.,  and  Turner's  art,  205. 

Saint  Augustine,  43 ;  mother  of, 
53,  54,  252,  254  ;  father  of,  53  ; 
physiognomy  of,  92 ;  natural 
vocation,  105,  144,  145 ;  pro- 
fligacy of,  145 ;  as  rhetorician, 
145 ;  purpose  of,  252-256 ; 
influenced  by  his  mother,  252, 
253  ;  influenced  by  Marie,  253  ; 
The  Fair  and  the  Fit  of,  254 ;  waning 


of  Manichean  influence,  254  ;  in- 
fluence of  Bishop  Ambrose  and 
the  Platonists  upon,  255 ;  emotional 
crisis  and  conversion  of,  256  ;  his 
seclusion  at  Thagaste,  312 ; 
sexual  history  of,  317,  318. 
Saint  Franckr  d'Assisi,  his  "  lyric  " 
type  of  sainthood,  43,  44  :  obscur- 
antism of,  44,  369 ;  parents  of, 
55,  56,  264 ;  fastidiousness  of. 
56 ;  physique  of,  93,  96 ;  health 
and  personality  of,  96 ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105, 147,  148;  youthful 
popularity  of,  129  ;  his  imprison- 
ment and  consequent  illness,  147  ; 
awakening  of  his  ambition,  148 ; 
a  dream  of,  148 ;  military  expedi- 
tion of,  148  ;  his  withdrawal  from 
society  and  conversion,  148,  265  ; 
caufe  of  his  disillusionment,  148  ; 
purpose  of,  264-270 ;  influenced 
by  Waldo,  264,  265  ;  betrothed  to 
poverty,  265  ;  breaks  with  father, 
265,  266  ;  self  will  of,  266 ;  licensed 
by  Church  to  preach,  267  ;  growth 
of  Order  of,  267;  revolt  of 
scholars  and  relaxation  of  the  rule. 
268 ;  heroic  ideal  of,  304,  305  ; 
his  vital  need  of  seclusion,  313, 
314 ;  fasts  and  meditations  of, 
314  ;  stigmata  of,  314  ;  greatness 
of,  407,  408. 

Saint  Gregory  the  Great,  recluse 
nature  of,  43,  55,  129,  130,  312  ; 
parents  of,  55 ;  gouty  tendency 
of,  93,  95  ;  physique  of,  93,  95  ; 
personality,  95  ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105,  129,  130  ;  popularity  of, 
129 ;  his  vast  correspondence, 
130 ;  purpose  of,  256-259 ;  his 
reluctance  to  accept  Papacy,  257  ; 
his  ecclesiastical  and  political  task, 
257,  258 ;  success  achieved  by, 
259  ;  analogy  of  his  career  with 
that  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  129,  259  ; 
as  champion  of  the  monks,  312  ; 
the  achievement  of,  313,  407  ; 
as  persecutor,  373,  374 ;  his 
dubious  relations  with  Phocas, 
374. 

Saint  Paul,  impulsive  temper  of, 
42 ;  physique  and  physiognomy 
of,  93,  95 ;  temperament  and 
health  of,  96  ;  natural  vocation  of, 
105,  143,  144 ;  as  anti-Christian 
zealot,  144,  145  ;  his  journey  to 
Damascus  and  conversion,  145 : 
independence  of,  145 ;  purpose 


INDEX 


423 


of,  247-249  ;  his  change  of  name, 
247  ;  "  discovered  "  by  Barnabas, 
247 ;  at  Antioch,  247,  248 ;  his 
special  qualification  for  proselyt- 
ising Gentiles,  248  ;  first  mission 
of,  248,  249;  hated  by  Judaists, 
249  ;  his  courage  under  adversity, 
303,  304  ;  character  of,  406,  407. 

Science,  versus  art,  26 ;  aesthetic 
tendencies  of  men  of,  27  ;  character 
of  men  of,  28 ;  set  also  Intellectual 
Type  and  Thought. 

Schopenhauer,  A.,  his  theory  of  will, 

14,  15. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  practical  capacity 
of,  35,  36 ;  snobbishness  of,  35, 
36  ;  aesthetic  opportunism  of,  36  ; 
not  intellectual,  36 ;  parents  of, 
52  ;  physique  of,  72  ;  physiognomy 
of,  75  ;  lameness  of,  76  ;  personal 
magnetism  of,  76  ;  natural  vocation 
of,  105, 106,  122,  123  ;  his  attempts 
at  drawing  and  music,  106,  122  ; 
prodigious  memory  of,  122  ;  com- 
pared with  Goethe,  122 ;  as 
cavalry  officer,  122 ;  as  sheriff, 
122 ;  as  landowner,  123 ;  social 
versus  aesthetic  ambition  of,  123, 
204  ;  purpose  of,  202-204  ;  annual 
raids  of,  202,  203;  his  love  of 
research,  203 ;  influenced  by 
Goethe,  203  ;  his  Border  Min- 
strelsy and  Lay,  203  ;  his  under- 
valuation of  his  own  gifts,  204  ;  his 
method  of  composition,  307,  308  ; 
first  love  of,  321,  322  ;  greatness 
of,  400,  401  ;  as  improvisator,  401. 

Selection,  Law  of  Hedonic,  3,  104, 
105. 

Self,  transliminal  and  subliminal,  12. 

Sensation,  an  abstraction,  4. 

Socrates,  the  demon  of,  12. 

Solitude,    insane    people's    love    of, 
292,  293  ;   men  of  action  and,  293,  j 
306,  307  ;    aesthetic  type  and,  307,  ; 
308;    intellectuals  and,   309-311; 
ethico-religious  type  and,  311-313  ; 
as  a  source  of  power,  313. 

Spencer,   Herbert,  on  individuation, 

15,  381-383. 

Spinoza,   Baruch  de,   as  artist,   27  ; 
physique    of,    83 ;      physiognomy 
and  health   of,   89 ;    frugality  of, 
89  ;   natural  vocation  of,  105,  127, 
128  ;     optical  work  of,   106,   128  ; 
purpose  of,   216-220  ;    his  dislike  ! 
of    Judaism,    216 ;      influence    of  | 
Jewish  philosophers  on,   217  ;    in-  I 


fluonce  of  Descartes  and  Bruno  on, 
217,  218 ;  anticipation  of  the 
higher  criticism  by  his  Tractatue, 
219,  403,  404;  refuses  chair  of 
philosophy,  219 ;  summary  of 
sources  of  the  philosophy  of,  219, 
220 ;  not  a  mere  eclectic,  220 ; 
courage  of,  302  ;  as  recluse,  310  ; 
posthumous  influence  of,  403,  404. 

Stendhal  (Henri  Beyle)  cited,  181, 
182,  351  ;  mentioned,  335. 

Stoics,  view  of  the,  concerning  ego,  13. 

Sylvia,  mother  of  St.  Gregory,  55. 

Thought,  character  of  men  of,  28  ; 
men  of,  a  more  advanced  type  than 
the  artist,  28  ;  longevity  of  men 
of,  48,  49  ;  physical  characteristics 
of  men  of,  83-91  ;  slow  develop- 
ment of  men  of,  228  ;  courage  of 
men  of,  302 ;  social  origin  of, 
395,  396  ;  power  of  representatives 
of,  401-406. 

Titian,  worldliness  of,  34,  193  ; 
stature  and  physiognomy  of,  72, 
73  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105,  110, 
111  ;  purpose  of,  193,  194 ;  his 
art  the  tool  of  ambition,  193  ; 
influence  of  Aretino  upon,  194, 
337,  338 ;  his  conception  of  woman- 
hood, 194,  337-339;  sexual  rela- 
tions of,  337-340 ;  first  phase  of, 
338  ;  second  phase  of,  338,  339  ; 
third  phase  of,  339,  340 ;  treatment 
of  the  nude  by,  338,  339 ;  last 
works  of,  339,  340  ;  greatness  of, 
399. 

Tuberculosis,  57,  60  ;  Nelson's  tend- 
ency to,  70  ;  Richelieu  and,  71  ; 
Spinoza's  death  from,  89 ;  St. 
Francis  dies  of,  93,  96. 

Turner,  William,  energy  of,  37 ; 
parents  of,  56  ;  ethical  purport  of 
works  of,  37 ;  physique  of,  72 ; 
physiognomy  of,  79  ;  mental  in- 
coherency  or,  79  ;  visual  defects  of, 
79,  80  ;  natural  vocation  of,  105, 
106,  123,  124  ;  attempts  at  poetry 
of,  106,  123,  124 ;  purpose  of,  204, 
205 ;  Buskin's  hero-worship  of, 
205  ;  his  love  of  debauchery,  308  ; 
greatness  of,  401. 

Twins,  Galton's  investigation  of  the 
life-histories  of,  101.  102. 

Variation,  fluctuating  and  mutationa), 

distinguished,  237. 
Versatility,  103, 104. 


424 


INDEX 


Vocation,  natural,  101-158 ;  four 
main  types  of,  105  ;  decisive  and 
single,  106-114  ;  decisive  but  with 
collateral  activities,  114-131  ; 
dubious  at  first,  then  single,  132- 
149  ;  dubious  at  first,  ultimately 

Eredominant,    149-157 ;     recapitu- 
ktion  of  results  concernine,   157, 
158. 

Weininger,  Otto,  on  Napoleon's 
"  conversion,"  182  ;  on  founders 
of  religions,  244 ;  on  Christ's 
conquest  of  Judaism,  371  ;  men- 
tioned, 410. 

Weismann  and  Reid,  views  of,  2. 

William  of  Nassau,  51. 

William  the  Silent,  ideal  aims  of,  32  ; 


parents  of,  51  ;  physique  of,  65  ; 
physiognomy  of,  66,  67  ;  his  charm 
of  manner,  67,  133 ;  natural 
vocation  of,  105,  132-134  ;  not  a 
great  soldier,  133 ;  chivalry  of, 
134  ;  purpose  of,  165-167  ;  motive 
of,  166  ;  abandoned  by  wife,  167, 
322  ;  marriages  of,  317,  318,  322  ; 
sexual  normality  of,  321  ;  achieve- 
ment of,  396. 

Woman,  theories  about,  316  ;  rela- 
tions of  great  men  to,  316-350  ; 
classification  of  relations  to,  317, 
319  ;  difficulty  of  problem  of  man 
and,  319, 320  ;  her  attitude  towards 
ideal  aims  of  men,  323-326  ; 
Meredith  on  homage  to,  349. 
350. 


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